Getting from Veince to Bled took a whole day, and it was the kind of day that if it happened at home I would have thought it was terrible but because I am in Europe it was kind of fun. The first leg of my trip was a train from Venice to Gorizia which is on the Italian side of the Italy-Slovenia border. The trains don’t run across the border anymore, so the idea is that you get a train to Gorizia, then get a 10min bus to Nova Gorica and continue on from the train station there. The recommended changeover time is 40mins and I had 3 hours so I thought I would have no problems. However when I got to Gorizia and asked where the bus left from I was told that the bus doesn’t run on Sundays. I was quite sure I had read that the bus ran every day – I checked this because I knew I would be travelling on a Sunday – so I waited around at the station for about 20mins hoping it would come and then psyched myself up for the 5km walk. At least this time I had learnt from my day in Milan and had printed out a map in case I needed it. About 500m down the road I saw the bus coming the other way! So I hurried to the next stop and caught it on it’s way back. I was the only person on the bus and I wasn’t quite sure where to get off, but fortunately the first thing that looked like a train station actually was a train station so I got off at the right stop.
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| I have no idea what anything means in Slovenian - it is impossible to even guess! |
The next train trip from Nova Gorica to Bled Jezero was incredible. I am really glad I got the train rather than a bus because the scenery was amazing. When I got off the train I had a 25-30 minute walk to get to the town and about 5 minutes after I started I heard thunder, 1 minute later it was pouring rain! By the time I found somewhere to shelter I was soaked, so when the rain didn’t stop after about 10mins I figured I may as well keep going. At least now I know the rain cover for my pack works because nothing inside was wet when I arrived.
After that I walked around the lake. I had planned to visit the castle in the afternoon but I met a girl at the hostel who had been there in the morning and she said it wasn’t worth the entrance fee so we decided to go and eat cream cakes on the lake instead. The cream cakes are a Bled specialty and are like a huge vanilla slice with an extra layer of cream as thick as the vanilla layer. It was very nice but not something I could eat too often. We definitely needed the coffee to go with it or it would have been too sweet to finish. Then at about 4pm another storm started so that was it for sightseeing for the day.
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| Cream cakes and coffee |
Today I got up early and went to Bohinj, which is a town about 40 minutes from Bled with another lake and an entrance to the Triglav National Park. There were 6 others getting on the bus at Bled, all Australians, so we had a good chat on the way and worked out what the best things to do were. I ended up spending the day with Ingrid, who is about 5 years older than me and living in Berlin, and her mother who is visiting from Queensland for a few weeks. First we did a 45 minute walk to a waterfall, only to find when we got there that the waterfall was an extra 20mins walk away and that you had to pay to get in. We decided that the first walk was nice enough and we could see much nicer waterfalls at home (there was a photo so we got the general idea). Instead we decided to spend out money going up the Gondola to the ski resort. That was an excellent choice because we had amazing views over the whole park from the top!
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| Top of the Gondola Ride |
After lunch we did another walk, this time around the lake. It was really beautiful - all of the wildflowers were out and we saw lizards, butterflies, fish and snakes. Before that i didn't even know there were snakes in Slovenia. We were also quite lucky with the weather, because on arriving back in Bled we discovered it had been raining there during the afternoon but we had sun all day.
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| Walking Path |
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| Wildflowers |
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| Lake Bohinj |
