Lake Bled, Slovenia

Saturday, May 28th

Lake Bled...
Since we were unable to visit the infamous Plitvice National Park while we were in Zagreb, Croatia, we absolutely had to see Lake Bled, Lake Bohinj, and the Savica waterfall in Slovenia. A minimum of four people needed to register for the hostel organized Lake tour in order for it to take place. Last night we were informed by our hostel that no one else had signed up for the tour except us, so this meant we needed an alternative mode of transport to the lakes. The hostel then mentioned that we could rent a car to drive to the lakes. Natalie and I came to the same conclusion: let's get some use out of her AAA international driver's license. 

The hostel called the rental company and set everything up yesterday. The car was dropped off at the hostel at around 8am this morning. Natalie handled the rental car paper work, while Morgan went to the train station to buy the night train tickets. While this splitting up of tasks was meant to be extremely efficient, it was also extremely frustrating because of our lack of communication! Given that the we had not planned where to meet once we each had finished our tasks, we spent a bit of time wandering in a large circle around the building until Natalie turned around and ran into me. 

So with the tickets and paperwork out of the way, we grabbed some pastries and jumped into the car. It was a lime green standard car, so Natalie was the designated driver since she was the only one that knew how to drive standard. The directions to Lake Bled were fairly simple or so we thought. Who would have thought that, "Follow the signs to Kranj and once you pass Kranj, follow the signs to Lake Bled" could be so difficult. Unfortunately about 8 km from the city center, we came to a fork in the road with a sign for Kranj pointing to the right and a sign for Kranj pointing to the left. Our map wasn't small enough to show the city roads, so we had to take a guess. We chose wrong, in a way. We went left instead of right and ended up on a windy country road indirectly following the highway we were supposed to be on. The drive should have taken 40 minutes but took around 75 minutes including a stop to ask for directions through the country towns. The scenery and cute towns were beautiful, so the unintentional detour was worth it.

We finally arrived at the Savica waterfall town, where we realized a new fact of life that should have been rather obvious...When one travels into the mountains and the weather is forecasted to be cold and rainy, don't where shorts and t-shirts. You would think that between a future doctor and a corporate climber, one conjure the idea to dress warmly. So after parking the car we ran to the nearby cafe to have a hot drink and wait for the rain to stop. 

After warming up, we marched on to the park entrance. Once again we had chosen an activity that would require hiking up numerous amounts of paved/carved rock stairs. Like any tourist armed with cameras and a long hike, we passed the time taking multiple photos. Someone even climbed a rock to strike a Captain MORGAN rum pose. Can you guess who? 

Once coming to the end of our 20 minute hike, we were greeted with a spectacular view of the mountains and the Savica waterfall. Again the inner tourist took over and we began snapping some pics. However, the residual spray from the waterfall quickly made us put our cameras away and run for dry cover. We half sprinted down the path to the warmth of our car.

We then drove to Lake Bohinj. Apparently Natalie's inner tourist hadn't had enough and a new photo shoot took place. She wanted a picture of her driving the rental car, so as we were driving down this incredibly narrow, windy mountain road we took photos! In hind sight it was probably not the most intelligent thing we've done so far, but no one was hurt :)

While the waterfall was cool, Lake Bohinj was absolutely breath taking. As we drove around this lake, we pulled off the road to hike down to the waterfront. It was pretty amazing to say the least. We were the only ones it seemed in the middle of the Slovenian mountains on the edge of this beautiful blue lake. Once again we took some photos and hopped back into the car to head towards Lake Bled. 

At Lake Bled we ate delicious Chinese food for lunch and tasted the famous Lake Bled custard cake, and apple strudel. Both were very good, though the apple strudel could have used some good vanilla ice cream. So after a very rich lunch, we seriously needed a walk. Good thing we had Lake Bled at our door step, which takes about two hours to walk around. About halfway around the lake and many photos later, we happened to run into the girl from our hostel, Martyna, who was going to be taking the night train to Budapest with us. We'd invited her to join us for the morning car ride but she was insistent on not waking up at 730am. She was very adamant also about having a ten hour nature meditation like experience alone at Bled. When we asked how her meditation was going, she responded blatantly with, "It sucks! I had this vision of what I wanted it to be and then I arrived here with this terrible weather plus I'm cold and it's wet!" We told her we were leaving for the hostel soon and she was free to join us. Having had a below expectations experience she quickly jumped on board. We finished our beautiful walk around Lake Bled with her then headed for the car. At the car, we found a huge dent and massive scratch on the side of the passenger door. That was definitely not there before hand, but thankfully Natalie had boughten the 14 Euro car insurance which covered all damages.

On the drive back we actually drove on the correct road. The highway was an incredibly quick, easy route to follow. Natalie even got up to 140 km/hr but that probably wasn't very fast considering people were flying by us. Back at the hostel everyone was out in the common area drinking or eating dinner. There was a new and interesting mix of people composed mostly of British and Australians travelers. With so many Brits drinking in the hostels there was a mutual consensus to go to an English pub to watch the Manchester United vs. Barcelona soccer game. With our train leaving at 2 AM, it was perfectly appropriate to watch the game and have a few beers, or cider in Natalie's case. We also ordered some spicy fries and onions rings, which were supposed to be delicious. The fries were, the onions rings, however, were not. The breading was too thick, but they were sadly all eaten to objections of our stomachs. We had some more great conversations with the American accountant, Tom, who lives in London and the Canadian, Martyna, who is originally Polish.

Around 1:15AM we walked to the train station. The train arrived, and we quickly grabbed two compartments. There were no beds, but 6 seats to a compartment. Each of us sprawled out onto three chairs and tried to sleep. Morgan learned another life lesson on the night train: English pub + soccer = multiple beers + massive amounts of fried food = bad overnight train travel. Also, never go on a night train that passes through multiple countries so that during your already uncomfortable night, you are woking up 6+ times between the hours of 2am and 7am.