Rakitna

Rakitna lake

It takes about two hours to hike up to Rakitna from my home. Too long for a weekday afternoon and too short for a weekend when I want to do more serious hiking. So I rarely go there. This time Marko and I decided to go by bicycle. It took us about two hours, so I figured I might as well have hiked up there, it would have been easier than to drag the bicycle all the way up. When I hike I take a direct route straight up along a marked trail through the woods while with the bicycles we had to take a longer way around on a gravel road. But going down made up for all the effort. We breezed down along the asphalt road in twenty minutes! Too bad it takes so long to go up, I would have loved to do that again!

Rakitna is most known for a hospital that treats lung diseases because the air is supposed to be fresh there and good for the patients. There is also a lake, convenient for swimming in the summer and ice skating in the winter.

Cerknica

Cerknica is another of those places that is relatively well known as a day trip destination in Slovenia but is too close to our home to merit our attention. So when Marko and I looked for a place to go on a bicycling trip we discovered Cerknica on the map. It took us just under two hours to get there so it really is not that far away. The only issue with getting there is that there is a hill in between so it was a gruelling hour of cycling uphill in order to descend on the other side. Of course we could have gone around that hill, but who wants to take the longer route on a hot summer day?

The most famous sight in Cerknica is the lake which is actually of the sort that sometimes you see it and sometimes you don't because it disappears into underground channels during some parts of the year. We didn't see the lake this time although I can't say for sure whether it wasn't there or whether we just didn't cycle far enough.

There is a statue of Martin Krpan on the main square in the town of Cerknica. Martin Krpan is a Slovenian folk hero, a well known character in children's stories and poems and is extraordinarily strong. He is supposed to originate from nearby, at least the stories say so.