Lake Bled, Slovenia

We decided to take a trip to see some of Slovenia and Croatia. Our sons visited there in May and sent some fabulous pictures, so we thought we'd go to some of the same places they did.

Our first stop on this trip was the lovely Lake Bled in the mountains of Slovenia. 

After we got settled in our hotel in town, we needed lunch. We found this lovely restaurant right on the lake,

Where we had a couple salads for lunch.

After lunch we walked around the lake. It looked like a long way, but we'd read that it should take about an hour and a half, which sounded fine, so we started out.

There's an island near the far end of the lake that has a church on it. It's quite picturesque, so I took lots of pictures of it. There are also a number of possibilities to rent a boat or ride across the lake. On the left in this photo you can see the castle on top of a hill. The white church steeple is quite close to our hotel in town. 

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About 3/4 of the way around the lake we saw a stairway that said "Cafe." We'd also read about this villa, which belonged to Tito. So we started up the steps. When the path split, it was not obvious which way to go. We split up. I explored the upward trail and Jim went down. He found a big building and signaled me to come that way, so I went back down. But then we found a sign saying the cafe was up, so we both went back up. It was quite a few steps by that time.

The view from the cafe was worth the climb. 

The cafe was very quiet. There were only 6 tables out on a little balcony, and only one was occupied. It was so quiet we weren't sure there was any service, but the other people had drinks. Pretty soon a waitress came by and we ordered tea and the famous Bled Cream cake. 

The cake was delicious.


This photo shows the narrow balcony. I took another picture the next day looking back at the cafe from the island. 



The next morning we walked up through the town towards the steps that go up to the castle. It was quite a climb. Slovenia borders Austria and reminded us of that country.


This is the courtyard of the castle. 




After the climb up to the castle in the morning, we opted for something more relaxing for the afternoon and took one of these boats across to the island. They are rowed by a rower in a manner similar to the gondoliers of Venice, but these boats carry up to 18 people at once.



This is the view of the cafe where we had cake the day before. 


And here is another view of the castle and the church in town. 


And here's one taken from the boat. 

The next morning we headed on to Ljubljana, the capitol of Slovenia. 


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