Lake Bohinj Mid-range
A farming valley: the gostilnas do trout from the lake, Bohinj cheese and štruklji, and the mountain huts do a bean stew and a slice of strudel for a few euros. The cheese festival in September is the local event.
Budget travel in Slovenia
What a visitor's money does in Slovenia: every guide rated from very cheap to very expensive, cheapest first, then the things that cost travellers money without buying anything — the ATM, the taxi, the SIM.
Mid-range average across 4 guides · 5 is very cheap
Money
Euro (EUR) · 1 EUR = 1.15 USD · 1 EUR = 0.86 GBP
Euro. Cards are taken everywhere including the mountain huts, and nothing needs exchanging from the eurozone.
ATMs
Avoid: Euronet, the standalone machines along the river and in the old towns
Use: NLB, SKB, Nova KBM
Cards are taken everywhere, including the mountain huts. Decline the conversion prompt at any machine.
Getting around
A short ride in Ljubljana: €6–10 across town in Ljubljana — middling
Ljubljana taxis are honest by the meter and expensive by the airport rank; the apps arrived in 2024 and undercut both. Outside the capital, book a taxi by phone — the apps thin out fast.
City by city, cheapest first
Ljubljana Mid-range
Friday from spring to autumn is Open Kitchen (Odprta kuhna) on the market square — every restaurant in town cooking outside. The rest of the week, the river terraces for coffee, the market for burek and fruit, and a gostilna out of the centre for a proper Slovenian lunch with štruklji.
Lake Bled Mid-range
Kremšnita — the cream cake — is compulsory, and the Park Hotel invented it. Beyond that, the gostilnas in the villages behind the lake are half the price of the lakeside and better: Bled trout, štruklji, the venison in autumn.
Piran Mid-range
Fish, unsurprisingly: the restaurants along the seafront are all fair and the ones a street back are better value. Piran salt from the pans, Istrian olive oil and Refošk wine are what to take home; the fritule at the harbour kiosk are what to eat walking.
The cost rating is this site's own, for a visitor, from the guides' authors and the corrections readers send in. The general rules — the conversion prompt, shoulder season, the airport taxi — are in budget travel tips.
The guides in Slovenia
LjubljanaSloveniaA capital you can cross on foot in twenty minutes, a river lined with terraces, and a castle on the hill above a car-free centre
Lake BledSloveniaAn island church in an alpine lake, a castle on a cliff above it, and a cream cake that is the reason half the visitors came
PiranSloveniaVenice’s little sister on a point of the Adriatic: a marble square, a bell tower, and the whole of Slovenia’s coast in a day
Lake BohinjSloveniaBled’s quieter, wilder neighbour: a glacial lake inside the national park, a waterfall above it, and Triglav at the end of the valley