Stunning Lake Bled and Bled Island
Minnesotan that he is, Jim spent a lot more time swimming in Lake Bled than I did, but here’s proof I made it in too
If you google Slovenia, the first image that pops up is of postcard-perfect Bled. It’s a lovely vacation town that sits on a stunning lake with that oh-so-pretty island with a church in the middle. Though it’s just barely an hour from Ljubljana, we picked up a car and drove here to facilitate the next parts of our journey.
When I was backpacking in Europe in college, my parents and two siblings came over and met up with me for a day in Florence. Before that they had courageously wandered into Yugoslavia to a place called Bled. Yugoslavia sure sounded exotic at that time. And this obscure town of Bled sounded surprisingly nice. It took me another 38 years to get here myself.
Despite having seen all those postcard images of Lake Bled, we were still blown away by the beauty of this place. You can walk around the lake in about an hour, and it’s gorgeous from every angle. The color of the water is stunning. A castle rises over one side of the lake. Pretty chalets are sprinkled all around. It’s all ringed by the craggy peaks of the Julian Alps. And that island church is so perfect.
Bled Castle watches over the lake
Happy people in a beautiful place
Architecture and window boxes remind us of romantic towns in Germany and France
You can’t take too many pictures of this stunning lake. Especially if there is a swan!
Hiking out of town toward the Vintgar Gorge
Just outside town I ran into my first cat of the whole trip. He came running toward me, and when he got close he sort of jumped to get his head closer to my hand for faster petting.
Though we came to Europe to escape the heat and humidity of July in New York, it’s actually been unseasonably hot in much of Europe. In fact, it’s been hotter in Slovenia this week than in New York. Cool blue Lake Bled has been a nice antidote to that.
For another escape from the heat, we hiked about an hour out of town to the Vintgar Gorge. There it takes about an hour to traverse the gorge on a series of boardwalks and footbridges. The air is cool and refreshing, and the river winds and crashes below you. Now we know where the word ‘gorgeous’ comes from. We were again stunned by the beauty of the place. And here we were afraid we were too jaded to be impressed any more!
The gorge was truly gorgeous
Here we are at the gorge — happy, cool, and impressed
More gorgeous gorge
The hike back to Bled took us through a very attractive forest
On one of my walks around the lake I wondered how different it looked when my parents were here in the Yugoslavia of 1984. Was it as beautiful then? Were there as many tourists? Were the pathways as attractive and well maintained? Did my parents walk all the way around the lake? Then I did some math and realized that when they were here they were 11 years younger than I am right now. And 20 years younger than Jim. Now that’s weird.
Jim was pretty excited by the local sausages
A pretty little group of water lilies on the lake
Jim looks pretty happy with the dinner menu
♥♥♥♥♥
If you can make a reservation at Hisa Franko, please do! The chef is the best female chef in the world and the restaurant was very memorable.
holy crap i want to go to there