Good Morning, Ljubljana!

Well, that wasn’t a very good night’s sleep, I’ll be honest. Everyone else seemed to cope better than me though, so we’ll soldier on. The train was very noisy with sounds like a dynamo overdrive type thing, and lots of stops with weirdly sudden braking. We pulled in to Ljubljana station about 30 minutes late, but that wasn’t a bad thing as the first bus to Bled only leaves at 7am on Sundays. I’d bought our “out” tickets but there was a ticket office and the guy helpfully printed out real tickets as “sometimes the drivers don’t accept the print-at-home versions”. I also bought return legs for tomorrow as the tickets are all open. I learned that tickets are cheaper at the weekend, quite a bit more expensive on weekdays, but there’s a discount for <15 year olds on weekdays. Oh, and buses to Bled go from stand 7. It’s quite exciting looking at the destinations for other stands – Sarajevo, Trieste & Florence etc! All kinds of possibilities for future trips…

I needed cash for a security deposit at our place in Bled, so I tried the Adecco bank across the road – no money. So I used the ATM inside the bus station. There’s a lot of advice to avoid any ATMs not at a real bank, but this one was in the bus station and gave me wholesome non-scam vibes. Fingers crossed! My normal bank card didn’t work at either ATM, but my TransferWise card did. 6 euro withdrawal fee from the ATM. 😐

The bus left at 7am sharp. We arrived an hour or so later in Bled, the driver having got more and more impatient with people trying to board and ask questions. We just kept quiet until it was very clear we were in Bled. It was obviously early, so we trundled to the water’s edge and had a breakfast of the contents of our bags, while also taking photos for keen morning lake visitors. I had a desultory conversation with the villa owner via the Booking.com app and we headed there, left bags under a kitchen table and went to find a boat.

The #1 obvious thing to do at Lake Bled is hire a boat and row to the little island. The island has a church on it, plus a nice café. My family were very polite about my limited rowing prowess, and helped navigate to a jetty on the island – only about 10 minutes row away. We didn’t really feel like paying to enter the church or go up its bell tower, so we settled for coffees & juices then a return whence we came. We were slightly over an hour, but the guy only charged us a single 20 euro hourly rate. Very nice.

We walked back around the lake and holed up in a chi-chi and overpriced restaurant for further refreshments as the sun was now past the yard-arm. We also got confirmation we could now check in, so we went and met Maria, who unleashed a wealth of advice and recommendations, and pouring plenty of scorn on the bar we’d just been to (thank God we didn’t eat there). In the end, we took almost none of her advice. 😉

Aurélie decided sensibly to have a bit of a nap, while I took the girls to the beach/water play area a little bit around the bay. You pay to go in, but money well spent, honestly. The girls donned life jackets for some inflatable fun, then we found the on-site café for adequate hot dogs. We got settled and had a bit of a swim and just about the time Aurélie turned up, we noticed there was a water slide too down the far end of the beach area! Well, that was the girls happy for the next three hours – they love a water slide. We had our kindles with us, and the café also sold Aperol Spritzes, so we were happy too!

Eventually we felt it necessary to move on. We passed by the bus station in Bled as we couldn’t decide about visiting the Vintgar Gorge. We’d not heard of it before coming to Bled, but Maria said it was great…but did we have enough time to do it…hmm hmm. We’d just decided that YES we would go and the tour agency Matmut were sorting out bus shuttles (it’s only 10 minutes away – you could walk it if you were feeling energetic) when they said “do you have your entry ticket already?” No we didn’t, and they were sold out online. We definitely didn’t feel like winging it and seeing if we could get in on the door, so it will have to be added to the list for future trips.

We did take Maria’s recommendation for dinner though – Ostraja (close to where we were staying, which was in its favour too). It was great, good food, no kids’ menu but they were happy to do small portions of many menu items, calamari and cevipcici (sausage-shaped pieces of lightly spiced minced meat – sort of like burgers in sausage form) were excellent and the local rosé was a stand-out winner. Delicious.