Bled, Slovenia

When we left Hungary, we had a couple options of how best to drive towards Venice. We had thought of Lake Bled after seeing pictures of it on a Rick Steves' TV episode, but the Vass family also encouraged us to go to Plitvice National Park in Croatia which has all these amazing waterfalls. Click here for some photographs.

We made the determining factor distances and available accommodation, and Bled won out. We're very glad it did. It is a beautiful little town and lake. Slovenia itself is pretty amazing. Everything is up to date and extremely well maintained - we were impressed!

In Bled we stayed in a great hotel run by the Berc brothers. We enjoyed the family atmosphere and the very hospitable place. They even have an honor bar in the breakfast room for an evening drink! The first night we had a marvelous meal and a popular restaurant which, besides being excellent cooking with great Slovenian wine, was a first-rate people-watching place.

The next morning we walked around Lake Bled. It's just a little bigger than Green Lake in Seattle - about 3.5 miles around. We saw Mute Swans (a species of swan), Marshall Tito's summer villa (Slovenia used to be part of the old Yugoslavia and Tito's mother was Slovenian), and the Bled Rowing Club. Rowers from here have won a dozen or so Olympic medals for Slovenia. We found a nice hillside restaurant with great small pizzas for lunch. Here is a picture of Lake Bled, featuring the small island in the middle:

After our walk, we drove to a nearby town to a wine store our server of the night before had recommended. The store included a wine bar attached to it, and when we went into the store we heard loud arguing going on. We asked the clerk if those were friends in there! She said it's the same every afternoon. These guys come in and start drinking wine, then they start arguing politics! Then she said it gets personal, the goes back to politics. She also noted that it seems to be worse three days before and three days after the new moon. It was hilarious!

We had a good dinner that night as well in a place next to our hotel, and before that we enjoyed time on the little balcony of our room. We liked Bled, and would highly recommend it to anyone headed that way.

Here is a picture of a Mute Swan: