Days 88 - 89 (June 2 - 3, 2013): Lake Bled, Slovenia

The Quick Facts:

* Took the one hour bus from Ljubjlana to Lake Bled, which is a beautiful lake set in the footsteps of the Julian Alps; it is a tourist town with plenty of hotels and restaurants, but not so overwhelming to take away from the peace and beauty of the surroundings
* We had such a beautiful time we decided to stay an extra day and check out Lake Bohinj, another mountain lake that is a bit less trafficked but no less pleasing to the eye
* Stayed at Ana Apartments – a little pension run by a family of four who converted perhaps an old barn into guestrooms; they were the nicest people (even gave us a ride to the train station when we left!) and provided a clean room with good hot water and great wi-fi; it was located in Bohinjska Bela which is the next town over from Lake Bled and therefore requires taking a bus or walking ~20 minutes, but it was cheap and therefore we found it to be a good deal.

The Good:

* Lake Bled (and Lake Bohinj) are each extremely beautiful, especially with the mountains as the backdrop; the people in the area are so gracious and welcoming that it rounds out the experience and makes this a place we want to come back to soon
* The local dessert – so Lake Bled is apparently famous for Kremna Rezina, which is a cream cake most closely related to the Napolean…but it is so far from a Napolean I can’t even begin to describe.  As with everything, there are many imitators, but the place to get the real deal is called Smon near the bus stop.  Holy cow, you’ll never want to eat another dessert again (and this is coming from a serial chocoholic so you know I’m serious!).  Anyway, as if you didn’t get the point, if you’re ever here you gotta go to this place and try the stuff.  OK?  OK.

The Bad:

* Nothing, we really enjoyed our time in Lake Bled.

Our first day in Lake Bled centered on touring the lake and its two main attractions: its small island which contains the Church of Saint Marika Bozja and the Bled Castle which sits high atop the hill overlooking the lake.  First, was the small island, which requires renting a row boat to get to.  I rowed out to the island (thankfully did not drown us!) and here are some pics from the island:

 

 

 

Carrie wanted to row back to shore, which I thought was a great idea!

 

Next up was the castle, seen here from the lakeside and then pictures of the castle/area once we got to the top:

 

 

We enjoyed our day so much that we decided to extend one more day to check out Lake Bohinj, the other lake attraction in the area.  Lake Bohinj also has two attractions: the first being the gondola up Mount Vogel and the other being the Slap Savica waterfalls.  First we rented bikes to ride to the gondola, which is a 1000m up the face of the mountain to a perch of ~1500m (you start at ~500m above sea level).  This was not Andy’s favorite but he persevered anyway….plus, not crying in front of your girlfriend out of fear is *so* 1950s stoic machismo (at least that’s what I told Carrie after a particularly sorry display).

 

After the mountain we hiked ~1 hour to the Savica waterfall.  It was nice, once we finally got there, but the hike involves a seemingly interminable amount of stairs through the wilderness, you begin to wonder if you will die there.

 

After our hike, we got back on our bikes and rode around a while.  Here are some of the better pics.

 

 

 

 And, finally, as mentioned the cream cake is pretty good.  Here is me furtively enjoying it, but also giving that slightly unnerving signal of "crazy" in case anybody decided to try and take it away from me...

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