Beautiful Lake Bohinj
Our last stop in Slovenia was two nights at Lake Bohinj. A quick drive from Bled, Lake Bohinj is a little deeper in the mountains, a little higher in elevation, and fully twice the size of Lake Bled. It is, in fact, the largest lake in the country, situated in Slovenia’s largest national park. OK, it’s the only national park in Slovenia. It may not be quite as beautiful as Bled, but surrounded in mountains as it is it’s a pretty good stop for a couple days.
What else to note about Bohinj? Definitely another good lake for swimming: even Mark went in a few times. Given that nearly all our beach time over the years has been in oceans and seas, we were both amused to note how much less buoyant fresh water is than salt water. Who knew?
Mark sent me a selfie while I was quite a bit further up the lake to show that he indeed was enjoying the water
We did one really good hike, some four miles up into the mountains to a gorge and the Mostnice waterfall. Now to be honest the gorge was all but invisible; there were times when it was apparent that there might be a stream down there somewhere but you could never really see it. And the waterfall was, well, decidedly modest, a creek running over some rocks. The hike itself, though, irrespective of the anticlimactic destination, was beautiful: some 90 minutes of alternating open fields with views of the mountains and then deep in forests. And the entire outbound trail utterly on our own; we got out pretty early and had the trail to ourselves. On the return there was the occasional hiker headed in, but we had it to ourselves going in.
Mark headed up to the waterfall. Or perhaps I should say the “waterfall.”
OK, one weird thing about the hike. When you leave the little town by the lake headed north, the road on both the paper map the hotel gave us with the trail marked and on Google Maps was labeled Stara Fužina, Old Fužina. Fair enough. But literally every other road up there, every time there was a fork or alternative road, was called Stara Fužina. Literally every road. Bizarre. It’s as though some local traveled outside of the region and got confused with all these roads using different names. Solution? All roads use the same name. As we passed through a little village along the way you would see an address, like 96 Stara Fužina. How is that supposed to distinguish it from all the other 96 Stara Fužinas? Damned if we know.
So that’s Slovenia. Great food, really good wine, beautiful lakes, great hiking, friendly locals, lively little capital. Nothing not to like. It’s funny to think that little more than 30 years ago this was a sad Communist, significantly dysfunctional place. Glad things got straightened around for our visit!
Tomorrow morning we’re off to Trieste where we’ll have lunch in the little northeastern corner of Italy. Now that’s exciting.
The view from our room. These were pretty much the first real clouds we’ve seen in our week here. Not at all unwelcome as opposed to some of the 90 degree days we’ve had.
We would lie on the pebbles at lakeshore reading and these cute little duckies would just swim right up to make friends
The couple hikes we’ve done in the region have been remarkably well signed. Little danger of getting lost here.
Sometimes the path was straight and open and sunny and reasonably flat
And sometimes winding and forested and cool
Grand vistas
And here I am at the apex of our hike. I’m literally like 10 yards or less from the waterfall. Yeah, that’s a pretty lame waterfall.
And the food! Our first night we were really struggling to find a decent place and decided to give Pri Lovcu a shot. I ordered lamb and asked if I could have vegetables instead of potatoes. So they served these elegant and perfectly grilled veggies. Nice service!
And the appetizer: a little trout carpaccio with trout roe. Really didn’t expect anything this elegant but we weren’t complaining.
One last shot of the hike to Mostnice
And a final early morning view of Lake Bohinj from the far side
Good to see you guys out on the road again!