Lovely Slovenia

That's right - Slovenia! (Don't worry, I didn't know where it was either) It's a beautiful country full of English-speaking and friendly people, nestled between Italy, Austria & Hungary, and Croatia to the south.

Our main destination in Slovenia was Lake Bled: a very picturesque lake with an island in the middle with an old church on it. I have done a puzzle of this place many times, so it was fun to see in real life.

Lake Bled

After some internet scouring before we left Venice, it appeared that the only way to reach Slovenia was either by train - which included something like 6 train changes along the way and a walk from one train station to another train station at the Italy/Slovenia border - or by bus. We were able to find a bus company with a direct route, so of course we opted for that route.

Our "bus" was actually a mini van that held 8 people. But it did have the name of the company on the side of it, so of course it was legit. Our van would take us from Venice to the capital of Slovenia - Ljubljana. I'll give you a minute to try to pronounce that... Did you guess Loob-lee-anah? Yeah I didn't think so. It took us about a day to stop trying to say it with a "J" like Jooblajanah.

Our driver was a nice guy that spoke no English, and curled our nose hairs with his body odor. We thought the smell would be the highlight of the 3 hour ride, but then the man got onto the open freeway and did around 130-140 kilometers an hour (about 90mph) and the speed limit was something equivalent to 65! He got up to about 175 a couple times while speaking on the phone until the signal would cut out, then he'd take the opportunity to send a quick text. Needless to say, we had to loosen our death grip on the arm rests when we reached our stop.

Also along the way, we saw a pretty big bus wreck, with all the unlucky people and their luggage stranded on the side of the road. Don't worry, it appeared that everyone was okay.

Apparently he had pulled out as a tractor-trailer was coming by. That's our van driver on the left.

Our driver must have known the guy, or the workers along the road because he hopped out and we waited for about 30 minutes while he chatted up the EMTs. Whatever... we were just happy to give our nose some relief until he got back in.

Who knew a ride to Slovenia could be full of such excitement!

After that, we took a comparatively boring bus ride to Lake Bled. We didn't actually know where our bus would drop us, but we had some good luck and got off exactly at the road where our B&B was. It was within walking distance to the main town of Bled, and to the lake. 

There is a huge castle up on the cliff that they would light up at night. Beautiful!

 The next morning was foggy and drizzly and we took a boat ride out to the lake to go visit the island with the church on it.

Misty mountains

Another boat! I haven't been on one of these in, like... 24 hours!

Our boat mates - 2 gregarious Aussie girls and 2 demur Asians

Brannan with the lake air blowing through his luscious locks

 This church on the island has a legend: There are 99 steps going up to the front of the church, and if a groom could carry his bride up the steps without dropping her they would have a happy marriage. Duh! If I got dropped down 99 stairs I would probably dig up that fun memory on every anniversary. "Remember our wedding day? When you dropped me down those stairs..."

99 steps up to the church

97...98...99! Looks like we are all set to have a happy marriage

 We got to walk around the island and the church before our trip back to shore.

Apparently Bled is famous for cream cake - they even had a cafe there that appeared as if this cake was all they served. And they have a cream cake festival. So of course we tried some!

Yummy!

Then we spent the afternoon walking around the lake. It only took a couple hours and was very beautiful and relaxing.

This is the country lane where our B&B was located. So quaint! Brannan kept referring to it as "The Shire" and lightly humming the Lord of the Rings theme song. However, our place looked more like a Bavarian house than a hobbit-hole.

Chestnut trees are EVERYWHERE in Slovenia. People were gathering them up and roasting them and selling them. We never did get to try any chestnuts roasted on an open fire though, but not for lack of trying. The first one we saw while we were hunting down a restaurant for dinner and didn't stop. The second one was a very burly Slovenian woman who didn't have any change. And some other ones were taking a break and not roasting anything. Oh well, at least we didn't get conked on the head as they fell out of the trees - which was frequently!

After Bled, we headed back to Ljubljana for one night. We had originally planned on just going past it and into Croatia, but we are glad we stopped and saw it. The city has a lot of university students there, so it has a cool vibe to it. People would just gather around and hang out.  And we found a restaurant that served some pretty killer nachos, so it gets a thumbs up in our book!

It was a neat mix of old and new city. The old part was an old Roman city and of course there was a Medieval castle sitting on top of the hill in the middle of the old town so we went and checked it out.

Great view!

Ljubljana

Old town is most of these orange tile rooftops, new town is further off in the distance

Here you can see the side of the castle. Apparently we didn't get any pictures from down below.

This was just a super fun climb up all those stairs to the castle turret

The castle had a chapel, and an unexpected little girl sitting in there that would write your name in calligraphy on a bookmark for you. She was amazing! You would write your name down for her and she would copy it. And she was just so cute and would tell everyone hello and have a nice day in English..

Writing Brannan's name... and probably thinking to herself "another N?"

Great souvenirs from Ljubljana!

Ljubljana also has something called Tromostovje (The Three Bridges) which we had to Google to find out the story behind that. There is a document from the year 1280 that refers to the bridge as the "Old Bridge", when it was just 1 bridge, so that is one oooold bridge. Then it was rebuilt in stone in 1842. In 1875 there was an earthquake - it didn't damage the bridge, but the city was under Austrian rule, and they told the Austrians that they needed money to replace it. So they got all this extra money to replace a bridge that was perfectly fine. They decided to use the money to build 2 extra bridges on either side for pedestrians. And now all 3 are pedestrian bridges and are pretty unique.

This is facing the main bridge, and the fencepost-looking barriers on either side are the other 2 bridges. 

Walking around the old city center was very entertaining in the evening, when all the street performers would come out. Mostly, it was just people hanging around or sitting at the cafes. We really enjoyed this place!

Brannan terrorizing the city of Ljubljana, Godzilla-style

This was a fine quintet who played such hits as "Let My People Go" (that song about Moses), "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen", and of course "Hello Dolly"

After Ljubljana, off to Croatia to see some waterfalls and hopefully some sunshine and sand!