From across the dark water, it looked like fairy lights had been flung against the jagged mountain slopes. Forming arcs and triangles, occasionally broken by backlit towers, Kotor’s twinkles put on quite the show. “You see…” Slavko my guide explained, “The lights form the shape of an old man. He guards this city”.
This week, UNESCO added 24 new sites to its ever-growing list of places worth protecting on this planet. The UK’s notable offering was the Forth Bridge in Scotland, a masterpiece of Victorian engineering, which I was lucky enough to see first hand last summer.
If you ever find yourself in Slovenia’s Vintgar Gorge, don’t stop at the end. When you reach the picturesque chalet providing temptingly cold beers and a picnic bench with a view, turn left and keep walking. Within two minutes, you will be completely alone.
Around the coastal city of Dubrovnik, solid ochre stone drops directly onto natural cliffs that plunge into the turquoise sea below. The ramparts of its protective walls once used for defence and embattlement, today stage thriving activity of a different kind.
I became inexplicably teary as I listened to the accordion’s brassy tones. I was perched underneath a bronze statue of Preseren; Slovenia’s most beloved poet. From across the main square, his ‘Juliet’ gazed back at us. As a mauve dusk settled over Ljubljana I realised that I was rapidly falling in love…and I don’t even like the accordion.
Did you know that barnacles have stomachs? It had never crossed my mind. Neither had I formed opinions on the size of salmon’s ovaries or the intricate structure of a whale’s bladder.