Traveling – Radovljica – Slovenia

On a day trip out from take Bled Slovenia (during the fall 2007 Europe trip), we drove to the small town of Radovljica. We were attracted to this town by Rick Steves travel video on Slovenia where he visited the local Bee Museum.

It took us about an hour to get from our hotel in Lake Bled to the town of Radovljica. We quickly found a place to park and walked the pedestrian only street to the Bee museum. This museum is quite fascinating because Slovenia has domesticated and exported bees around the world for hundreds of years.

Displays in the museum showed the local uses of honey, bees wax, and the bee boxes (hives) that have uniquely painted fronts. The painted fronts are so the bees can find their way to their unique home, and some of the paintings are quite entertaining such as a devil sharpening a woman’s tongue on a grinding wheel.

After the Bee museum, we visited the nearby House Lectar that includes a hotel, restaurant, and in the cellar a ginger cookie company. Many of the ginger cookies were heart shaped with message written in frosting like those we saw in Munich. They also make custom shapes for companies to use in advertising; cars, horseshoes, etc. This was a very interesting place to visit and chat with the people.

Our next stop was at a small restaurant to get some fortification in the form of a pastry. We chose a dessert called sachre torte. It is a chocolate cake with whipped cream, but we were very disappointed that it was very dry and without much in the way of flavor. We are always disappointed when the tastes or textures of a dessert do not live up to our expectations based on how the dessert looks!

The town was definitely off the beaten tourist path, yet it was beautiful to tour and made for a very nice walk. When traveling, we always try to find a small unique item from the areas we visit to use on our Christmas tree to allow us to remember the places we have visited. In this town, we picked up some intricately shaped bee wax Christmas ornaments and a small heart shaped ginger cookie. Whenever we see these ornaments, we instantly remember the wonderful time we had in the town of Radovljica.

Adventure In Food: Author: Kerry Howell