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There is only one way to travel to Slovenia and that's with

In Slovenia, the car is king the highways are a breeze gilding into baroque Ljubljana from the Istrian coast, we found a space so perfectly central it edged the main square, Preseren square. Tankards foamed on sunlit tables, students cycled by and nowhere sold parking tickets. "You go into the square," drawled the salesgirl in a nearby English-language bookshop. "There's a kiosk." But the bored blonde within shrugged, gesturing a tourist office amid crooked town houses of gingerbread tiles. Once there, someone signalled a building adjacent, where a clerk blinked. We were pondering things back at the car, when a man locking his cried: "Welcome to Ljubljana!", waving a ticket. It was valid for one hour; but saved the day: when we returned and waggled it before the clerk   "Like this, but longer" she produced a penalty notice: "If you get one, bring me and I will cancel." Motoring in Slovenia and Croatia held other mysteries. Why did cows silhouetted on warning signs have such enormous udders -- unless that was the warning? That said, for two survivors of Italian autostradas and Greek hairpins, this journey was as simple as it was seductive. After flights to sooty grand Trieste in northeast Italy we circled the Adriatic in a hire car, south of the border into Slovenia, where Istrian peninsula meets sea. We were sinking clear beer portside in Piran, a sweep of Venetian palazzo and dolly mixture villas, by the time the blue drained from the day leaving cloud bruises upon pink. In 1991, Slovenia was the first of the republics to declare independence from communist Yugoslavia. Now it felt self-assured, its wide roads smooth and empty Piran to Ljubljana unravelled with conveyor-belt ease, past Little Red Riding Hood pinewoods against peaks; Habsburg churches with Iced Gem domes, mothering their villages like fussy hens. Ljubljana opened like a storybook: scaling the Old Town's shuttered clutter to the castle, descending for ham rolls beside Shoemakers' Bridge. Back in Piran, the last blast of afternoon coloured the marina the tones of a film starring Bardot. Yachts tinkled, a soundtrack to calamari and cold Riesling.

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