From Ljubljana to Lake Bled

The train journey from Budapest to Ljubljana was a long one, about 8 hours, so we arrived in a strange city, in a foreign country we really knew very little about, in the dark at 9.30pm hoping to settle quickly into our hostel. The hostel (Dragondoss, for future reference) was just a short walk from the train station, which turned out to be pretty much the only good thing about it. We arrived to a dark, seemingly empty building. There was no answer when we rang the doorbell, or when we banged on the door or when we tried hollering. After some 15 minutes of apprehension a very grumpy looking couple opened the door, handed us a card with a phone number on it and walked out. I rang the number and proceeded to explain that we were waiting outside the hostel, at the time we had arranged to arrive by email. "You're where?" "Outside Dragondoss" "What are you outside the hostel?" "Yes, we have a booking.." "Right now, you are outside the hostel?" "Yes.." "Hmmm okay I will be there soon". Eventually the hostel owner arrived, let us in, and everything was sorted. Although as we went looking for the bathroom one of us goes to open a door and the owner goes "don't open that, there's nothing to see in there", at which point we more or less convinced ourselves that we'd walked into the middle of a horror movie and that's where all the other dead bodies were being kept. Luckily our rooms didn't turn out to be quite as bad as we had begun to imagine in our heads, and the rest of the evening passed uneventfully.

Having survived out first night in Ljubljana, we got up early to take a coach out to Lake Bled, a famous Slovenian lake with an island in the centre. This ended up being one of my favourite days of the whole trip, as Lake Bled was beautiful. The water was such a vivid blue colour, and you could see mountains all around. Despite the weather forecasts insisting that a storm was impending we had sunny weather the whole day. Lake Bled is relatively small, so it was fairly easy to walk all the way around, giving us great views of every angle. About halfway around the lake we got to a rowing centre. Apparently this is a major location of olympic rowing training and world championships, and we even got to see some races out on the lake. 

From just around the corner we could also rent a row boat to take out to the island in the middle. The island's main building is a church, with a famous wishing bell. Our entire time on the island the bell barely stopped ringing. We walked around the island, and also enjoyed some of the best dark chocolate ice cream I've had, before rowing back to land. 

 From there we kept walking around until we reached the main shopping area. Every cafe at Lake Bled was advertising the famous "Bled Cream Cake", basically a custard square. Feeling we couldn't leave without trying all of the traditional foods, we headed to the hotel claiming to be the original home the cream cake. It was delicious, although the slices were massive and far to sweet to manage a whole one.

Completely tired out, we headed back to the bus station only to realise we had a 90 minute wait for the next coach back to Ljubljana. Luckily we had a beautiful view to enjoy while we waited.

Our next day was spent in Ljubljana. We took a walking tour in the morning, which took us around the city centre. It's amazing that our guide managed to stretch the tour out to a good 2+ hours, as Ljubljana is a very small city. We learnt a lot about Slovenian history, particularly their separation from Yugoslavia. We entered one of the major churches, saw the university and crossed a number of bridges over the Ljubljanica river. Probably the most famous of these was the Dragon bridge, which ties in with the many myths about dragons and Ljubljana. 

We were unlucky with the rest of our time in Ljubljana as just after the tour finished there was a sudden downpour. The heavy rain continued for most of the afternoon and through the evening, so we more or less gave up on exploring any more of the city.

With another long journey to Salzburg ahead of us we took an early train out of Ljubljana the next morning. Our first train was very busy and we found ourselves seated next to a Slovenian family. Part way through the ride the young boy turned to me to ask in English if I had a pen, I said no but my friend leaned across the aisle to offer his. Much to our amusement the boy replied "ah, so English truly is the language of the world".

Byyeeeee!!