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Places to Stay

We will be in Slovenia for 5 nights and will have a rental car with us. We are thinking of staying in Ljublana as our "home base" and will probably do several day trips from there (i.e. Lake Bled, Julian Alps, the Karst). However, none of the Ljublana accommodations in Rick Steves' book look particularly appealing. We are hoping to spend $100/nt or less. Does anyone have suggestions of good places to stay?

Posted by
7010 posts

I've not been there so no specific recommendations. What I would do is go to booking.com, plug in Ljubljana, put in your dates, go on the left and check the box for rate $60-139. I did it with dummy dates in June and 57 properties came up. Sort them by rate if that's the most important to you, or sort them by rating score. I saw one with 8.9 (excellent) for $106/night. You can google for reviews on the hotel you choose and check Trip Advisor reviews also. If you don't want to book through the service, go to the website for the hotel you choose or call them and book directly with them.

Posted by
1446 posts

Unfortunately, Ljublana's accommodations is more expensive than the rest of the country.

The only one I found to be a good value is Gostilna Pri Žabarju, outside the city center on Cesta Viška. However, it's still priced above your budget. I had also considered a place called Ahotel on Cesta Dveh Cesarjev - this one is on Booking.com.

Posted by
5687 posts

I've been to Slovenia before and have been considering a future trip back. I saw there were a lot of places listed in Ljubljana on Airbnb, a site people use to rent out spare rooms and apartments directly without a big booking service (I've never used it before but some friends have) and some of the Airbnb choices for Ljubljana look interesting and affordable. In Slovenia (and Croatia), it's quite common to stay at "sobe" (private rooms) anyway and there are other "sobe" booking sites besides Airbnb (which is worldwide). I've had good luck in sobe in Slovenia/Croatia and have found them often more refreshing than a conventional hotel, anyway. In Kobarid, I stayed in a room on the top floor of some family's house, something like $35 USD/night.

In Ljubljana, I stayed at the Slamic B&B last time and it was nice but I think it has been "discovered" now - you will find them listed on booking.com now (they weren't when I stayed). Ljubljana itself is much smaller than you probably imagine, though, if you've never been there, so it may not be as important as you'd guess to have a central location. Use Google maps to give walking directions to the center from any place you might stay and see how far of a walk it might be - assuming you leave your car parked while exploring Ljubljana.

Posted by
77 posts

Thank you for the suggestions! If there aren't any particularly good spots in Ljublana, is there another town we should look at to use as our "home base" if we're trying to see Lake Bled, Julian Alps, Karst, and/or Logarska Dolina?

Posted by
5687 posts

I loved Ljubljana especially at night. I've been there on two separate trips. It's fairly small, there isn't a lot of great cultural significance to see, but it's lovely just to wander around and enjoy the beautiful scenery and architecture. Plus it's a fairly lively city. (One recommendation: see the Jože Plečnik house if it's open while you are there. It requires a private tour, but it's not much, maybe a half-hour tour, but very worth it. I think Rick covers it in his book.)

I'd check Airbnb and other websites before giving up on Ljubljana. On visit I stayed at a hostel in a private room (private bathroom too). There are options.

Lake Bled is beautiful, but the town of Bled itself is nothing that special. It makes sense to base yourself in Bled for at least a night or two to see the area, but I wouldn't stay there the whole time. I found Ljubljana a much more fun place to come back to in the evenings.

Posted by
470 posts

I agree with Andrew, it's nice to have a home base in a place that's appealing in the evenings and Ljubljana is by far the best choice in Slovenia when it comes to that. That said, you haven't really given us any specifics, when are you visiting Slovenia? What does $100 per night mean, is that per person or per room? If per room how many people are travelling altogether? These are all factors that will significantly affect the price of accommodation and your options.

Posted by
77 posts

Thanks for all the tips! There will be two of us travelling, in July. It sounds like Ljublana will be the best place for us to base ourselves out of and perhaps if we increase our budget to $150/nt we'll be able to make one of the recommendations work. It also sounds like it will be tough to decide what to do and what we'll have to cut out with only 5 nights in Slovenia!

Posted by
1446 posts

Hi Jordan,

I can recommend two specific daytrips:

1 - Lipica Lippizaner horse farm, Postojna cave and Predjama castle. All 3 easily done in one day, with good highway driving to start at the horse farm.

2 - Radovljica (plan on lunch here) and Lake Bled. Take a slow route up (through Skofja Loka), finish the day in Bled and speed back on the highway in the evening.

Enjoy!

Posted by
5687 posts

If you drive from Ljubljana to Bled, I highly recommend detouring through the pretty town of Škofja Loka instead of taking the highway. The drive from Škofja Loka through the mountains and down into Bled (through Kropa if you look on a map, not through Kranj) is really beautiful - some stunning views. And Škofja Loka itself is worth a stop. I think this route takes you through Radovljica as well.