Up, breakfast and showers before Warren came to collect us in his car at 10am for a day trip to Lake Bled and Vintgar Gorge. It took us about 1 hour to drive to Lake Bled, heading North West. We went straight up to the Bled Castle which is perched on a steep cliff 100m above the lake. It has towers, ramparts, moats and a terrace – a typical castle, and it dates back to the 11th century. The castle was fairly small, but the most significant aspect was the view over Lake Bled.
Lake Bled is emerald-green in colour, so a brilliant site in contrast to the green lush country around it. A few springs in the area feed to water to the lake. Bled town is based on the tourism that comes with this lake. It was great to see no motorised boats on the lake, only paddle boats of various sizes.
 |
| View from castle of the Lake Bled and Bled Island |
 |
| Castle |
 |
| View of castle from Lake Bled |
 |
| More dragons |
After getting numerous photos from the castle, we headed down to the lake and jumped on a wooden (pletna) boat to take us to Bled Island. Initially I was thinking we could hire a boat ourselves and row out but I am so pleased we didn’t as it is a fair distance. Bled Island is the only true island in Slovenia and has been the site of a Christian church since the 9th century. Once we reached the island we had half an hour to wander round, which was plenty of time as boat loads of Japanese tourists arrived at the same time. They headed into the church, and we decided not to!
 |
| Water was so clear you could see the fish |
After getting back onto the mainland, we headed off for a late lunch. Lunch is the main meal of the day in Slovenia. We went to a lovely place in the shore of the lake, and tried a bottle of Slovenian white wine to go with our meal. Warren is really good at pointing items on the menu that are more traditional Slovenian cuisine, and Al and I try them as often as we can.
After lunch we headed off in the car to Vintgar Gorge. It took us an hour to walk from the car to a waterfall, and an hour back. The colour of the water raging down the gorge was an incredible pale blue colour, and was so clear that we could easily see fish in sections were the water was not running as quickly. It is such a beautiful part of the world.
We didn’t finish our walk til early evening (about 6pm) but still had time to stop at a cafe Warren wanted to take us to so we could experience a local speciality, a pastry called Kremna Rezina. It is a lot like a vanilla slice minus the vanilla icing but including a cream layer. The custard however was so much lighter than in a vanilla slice. It really was great.
Warren dropped us off at the hotel. Al and I grabbed the laptop, her kindle, Warren’s Lonely Planet Slovenia book, a couple of beers and packet of chips and spent the next 2 + hours planning out our following weeks of travel, and booking accommodation. What we are going to do is head from Ljubljana to the Slovenia coast via caves and castles, then work our way south down the Croatian coast. After initially being disheartened at the cost and lack of accommodation options (as we are coming into peak summer season), we got on a roll and managed to book accommodation for every night except two.
No comments:
Post a Comment