Predjama Castle
The next morning, we set out for our first road trip destination, Predjama Castle, the world’s largest cave castle. Predjama literally means “in front of the cave”. Such a fitting and factually descriptive name for this medieval castle that sits in front of a cave on a 400 ft. high cliff overlooking a river running through a valley below.
The castle as it stands now has gone through many additions, but the original rooms built over 800 years ago are still standing. For a medieval castle, it is bright and well lit with lots of windows to let in natural light.
What stood out most to me? For one, the influence, wealth and power of the church during that time was noted in the fact that the priest had one of the largest and most comfortably furnished rooms in the castle. And adjacent to the priest’s quarter, what should we find but a window looking down into the torture chamber. How convenient for the father to easily roll his doughy self out of bed and save a soul even before defiling his chamber pot.
Behind the castle, we climbed a set of slippery stone steps to gain access to the cave. The view out of the cave entrance is spectacular, and I’m sure it was such a strategic defensive vantage point back in those warring days. Although we were not allowed to wander too far back into the cave, the main cavern was already huge and impressive. It harkens back to the hollows within the caves at Helm’s Deep where the people of Rohan took refuge during the battle against Saruman’s army of orcs and Uruk-hai.
Postojna Cave
After spending more time at the castle than we expected, we headed over to Postojna Cave just down the road. As we’ve seen many impressive caves during our travels, the real reason we wanted to see Postojna cave is because of its entry. A fun subterranean train ride was the only way to get to the heart of this cave. It’s like we were at a theme park. How could we pass up the chance? In fact, in 1872 Postojna Cave was the first in the world to introduce a train ride into the belly of the world.
Before entering the cave, we visited the vivarium to find the origins of baby dragons. Olms dwell in the deep, dark underwater rivers and streams in caves. Interestingly, olms are born with eyes, but like all creatures that can survive without sunlight, they become blind as they grow up. Amazingly, olms can survive without food for over ten years while living to be 100 years old. Kind-of too boring of a long life, if you ask me. I hope I don’t ever reincarnate as an olm even if they have a cool fake identity as baby dragons.
The Church of St. Primož
Lyle arrived at the church before the rest of our group and had set up a time lapse on a grassy knoll off the side of the road. Lyle read that the church gets lit up 30 minutes after sunset each night. So we waited and waited.
30 minutes passed. 40 minutes passed. Phong put away his tripod and with Sandy started walking back to their car. Within seconds of them leaving, the church lights turned on, exactly at 8:48 as I had predicted. They didn’t believe me at first when I called them back. Good thing Lyle had the patience to wait a few more minutes.