Slept great last night; the first cool evening of the trip and it is so dark and quiet here. We have a hay meadow and creek out our window, the meadow is surrounded by dark green fir and pine. There are deer in the meadow this morning. I took a walk and noticed the beehives are painted up all cute, turns out it is a Slovenian tradition. I went down to drink coffee while Gail got ready, then we had a great breakfast, including muesli and jogurt again! Our friendly innkeeper sent me off with another half litre of red wine, poured into a hastily emptied water bottle. I will have no trouble with my blood today!
Today we will be driving back roads through the hills and mountains of Slovenia, hoping to cross the pass by Mt. Triglav.
We set out OK but after an hour we are on a dirt, one lane road, bumping along some really beautiful places, but I'll be damned if I can find these one house "villages" on Google maps. We are way out in the country now, going slow on what is like a dirt logging road but is signed 604, so I about know where we might be. Sort of. This is turning into a cool adventure. Over a one lane bridge, up and over a pass, then winding down, down what is like a logging road. After an hour we drop into a town, admire the river, stand on the bridge watching the fishermen, grab drinks and follow a paved road again, going on.
So we head kind of blindly north, eventually crossing the road we want, then following the amazingly smoky mint-green Soča River.
The valley starts wide but narrows until eventually the Soča is roaring through a narrow slot canyon, but it never loses that amazing color.
The Slovenia flag has a three peaked mountain on it, with three way lines at the base. The wavy lines are this river, the mountain is Mt. Trig. Through little towns, each with cute little church steeples, cute houses with cute red roofs set in cute fields... in fact, Slovenia is just so damn cute everywhere, it makes my eyeballs hurt. We need the sound of music soundtrack. One valley we head down and see a sign, the world famous Lipizzaner stallions are bred here. Huh. We stop and look, see just goats, but just as we walk back to the car, on cue, some magnificent white horses walk out of the woods to pose for a few photographs. Suddenly, on cue, they all gallop away over the hill. As the river narrows, there are these suspension bridges across it, we stop so I can go out and bounce on one. Eventually we start to wind up the mountain, the valley has narrowed and now we are heading out the head, switchbacking up the face of Trig. The switchbacks pile up on one another, you can look back down on three, four, five of them; the corners are paved with cobblestones for traction, and every switchback is numbered and the elevation noted. One thousand metres, two thousand, switchback number 33, 46… there are fifty all together. We top the pass and, of course, there is a café (hut) on top so we park and admire the views over a glass of wine and ham & cheese panini. Eventually we wind down, down through more cuteness, more single rack hayracks, happily painted beehives, green forests until we see the signs for Lake Bled, our destination.
Lake Bled is the single most visited destination in Slovenia, so it really must be something special in a beautiful country.
Slovenia tourism ads capitalize on the middle letters, like this:
sLOVEnia
Oh yea. I LOVE Slovenia. We sLOVEnia. But then again, I also croLOVEatia and turLOVEkey and monteLOVEnegro.
So, we get to Lake Bled and it is like a fairy tale. There is this church with massive steps on an island in the middle of the lake. There is a castle on a cliff high over the lake, and a white, tall-steepled church at the base of the cliff. There are a few beaches around the lake as well, and the town, motels and pensions are all clustered at one end.
We walk the four or five kilometres around the lake (nice path) which takes us past sunset, then we go to dinner. It is a great dinner: Gail's vegetable platter was beautifully done and tasted great, while I had breaded trout (from the lake) and pork in mushroom sauce. Gail had a half litre white wine, I had a half red, and we wrapped up the evening with dessert: fresh blue, rasp- and strawberries!
Maybe I do sLOVEnia!