Ljubljana, Slovenia, Europe

Today was an excellent day, spent mostly in nature. It started with a bit of a hiccup when I was told yesterday that the busses to Bled go every hour on the hour from Ljubljana. I went to get the 8am bus only to find out that is the only hour that a bus does NOT leave. So I had to sit at the bus station and waste an hour. Finally I got moving at 9am, and I decided to go straight through Bled and visit Lake Bohinj first.

This is the largest lake in Slovenia, and much less touristy than Lake Bled. It is 12km (7.5 miles) to walk around the lake, and I had only planned on walking half way around the lake and then get a bus back to Bled. Well, the scenery was so stunning that I decided to just keep going and walk all the way around. I stopped on the west side of the lake and enjoyed my lunch with a phenomenal view of a crystal clear like in the middle of snow-capped mountains and beautiful sunshine. I couldn’t have asked for a better day for this trip. The forecast had been for rain, but not even one drop fell today.

The water was clearer than anything I’ve ever seen and it had this incredible turquoise color tint. It was absolutely stunning. I got back to the main village by Bohinj and got the 25 minute bus ride back to Lake Bled. I met two lovely Canadian girls on the bus who had already been to Lake Bled so they gave me a few tips and then they headed on to Ljubljana. It wasn’t until I reached Lake Bled that I realized just how not-touristy Lake Bohinj was .

I think that in my entire time at Lake Bohinj I saw about twenty other people walking around the lake. When I first saw Lake Bled, I was surrounded by at least fifty people. Lake Bled was also stunning, and I was lucky to have nice weather there as well. The difference for me was that Bohinj was completely natural. There was nothing on the lake that made the scene more stunning. At Lake Bled, it as a beautiful lake with a much stronger turquoise color, but the castle and churches on the lake definitely helped make it more beautiful. It also just felt a lot more touristy with all the shops near the lake and the paved walkway that goes around the whole lake.

I spent about an hour and a half walking around Lake Bled and then made my way back to the bus station. It was an excellent day spent outside of a city, for the first time in a long while. I am going to have to try to get more of these days in because even though I did A LOT of walking, it felt like a great way to reenergize. Cities are great for having so many sites, but after a while they all start to look the same. Today was a nice reminder that there’s a lot more out there than just the cities.

I’m back at the hostel now watching the Red Sox try to win their seventh in a row. I bought my train ticket for tomorrow to go to Salzburg in the morning, so after this game I’ll have to go get my stuff together for an early morning departure. I’ve started to look ahead at which cities I might go to after Salzburg and it looks like I’m moving on to the really expensive part of Europe. The average price I’m seeing for dorm rooms is going up from about €10 per night to about €40. I’m not happy about that!