Euro Day 25 - Bled

Thursday, 18 July 2019

I was in two minds about Bled after our short visit to the town last night - on the one hand it was really pretty. On the other hand it seemed really busy with backpackers looking to be entertained.

We couldn't get into the campground, so we're in a small apartment in someones roof in a little township 2k or so out of Bled. Jon and I drove to town early this morning to run a lap of the lake.  It was really nice.  

I'm not saying we ran slowly but on our 6k loop some guy passed us in the opposite direction 3 times! 

Once we finished we stopped by the local bakery and got a huge loaf of bread for a couple of euros. Then we went home to wake the kids. 

Once we all got going our first tourist stop for the day was Vintje Gorge - again just a few k away.  The parking was filling up as we got there, but that was actually quite good as we parked in overflow parking which gave us a pleasant 1k walk through the country side before we even got to the official attraction.

Once we made it the gorge was lovely - it had amazing clear green water.

 The path through it was around 2k long and sometimes so narrow you had to wait for oncoming people to pass by. It was great.

After the gorge we drove back to town (parking in the handy places on the outskirts - and funnily enough using the same EasyPark app that Hobart has to pay for it!).  We had a couple of  other 'must-dos' for Bled . The first was to row to the island in the middle of the lake.  Actually we would have preferred to paddle-boat it, but that option wasn't available. So rowing it was. We all took turns on the oars:

The island has a church that people can visit and ring the bell for good luck.  We figured we've had a fair bit of good fortune already so we decided just to circumnavigate the island rather than go ashore to ring the bell. Also, it seems that good luck isn't free, so we saved ourselves 5 euro too.

Back ashore it was time for lunch and a swim. Bled seems to be a bit more controlling about the water activities than Annecy so the only place to swim at this end of the lake was somewhere you had to pay to enter.  This was annoying but we duly forked out our euros and ate our packed lunch on the shady grass before cooling off in the lake.    The kids played on the aqua park inflatable objects:

Once we were all refreshed we walked up to the other compulsory tourist attraction - the castle that sits on a hill above the lake.  The walk to it was steep but lovely.

Once up on top we looked straight down onto where we'd just been swimming.  We could  even see the dark shapes of the bigger fish cruising around the lake.

By the time we'd done all this it was getting on to 4pm, so we headed back to the car then went to the supermarket on our way home. I'm loving Slovenian supermarkets. The huge areas given over to pasta in the french and italian supermarkets have been replaced with a much more diverse range of foods including finally some indian offerings.  They also have a chilled drinks section - bliss!  And it's not too expensive either - Croatia and Slovenia have been noticably cheaper than France and Italy. 

So after today I'm in one mind about Bled - it's lovely and actually a lot more chilled than my first impressions.  It would be easy to stay longer and do some of the other activities that are on offer - rafting, horse riding, zip lining, mountain biking etc etc but we're heading down the road to Bohinj national park tomorrow.