I woke up to light streaming through the windows in the sloped ceiling of my top floor penthouse. The windows and blinds were fully automated. I had arrived in the dark, so I could not understand how the darkening blinds worked. Moving them at night in this quiet lake town with its muted street lighting had made no noticeable difference.
With no chance of getting back to sleep, I got up and looked out. I could see the castle that I would visit in the afternoon. It was going to be a great day for hiking around the lake.
I went downstairs to check out the breakfast. The room was bright and pleasant. That was a good start.
Hotel breakfasts are very much a hit or miss proposition, usually landing on the miss side. This blog is full of my complaints from my previous trips. My agency designed travels always include breakfast, but since I made all the reservations on this trip, I had the option and did not pay extra for breakfasts, thinking that I had better odds at getting proper croissants and lattes at local cafés.
But some of my hotels included breakfast as part of their basic services, which in the case of Penzion Kaps turned out to be a very good thing. This was a breakfast hit. There were no soggy eggs in warmers; a nice lady made eggs to order. There was a great choice of fruit and cereals, and most important of all, there was a machine for my latte.
After four trains took me under the English Channel and across a large part of Europe, here I was eating my breakfast in Slovenia, a place I had only known about for a few months, which meant that it has never been a place that was on my “bucket list”, and I do maintain a spreadsheet of places I want to visit.
I had even made Slovenia my “official” destination, which on this trip of many stops by train had some significance. It was in the name on the train app. I told everyone that I was going to Slovenia. But what it really meant was that Slovenia had precedence when planning my stops and number of days at each. So, when there was the issue with the tracks that meant choosing between Munich and Bled, Bled got the extra day.
Now I was at Lake Bled, considered one of the most beautiful lakes in the world. I would soon be walking along its shores.
Slovenia has been part of many different empires during its history such as the Roman and Byzantine, most of the time being ruled by the Habsburgs of Austria as part of the Holy Roman Empire and eventually Austria-Hungary. Coastal portions were held for a time by Venice. That ended with the First World War. Slovenia joined with Croatia, Serbia, and Montenegro to form Yugoslavia. After being annexed during World War II, it rejoined Yugoslavia which lasted until June 1991, when it became a sovereign state. Slovenia was spared the worst parts of the dissolution of Yugoslavia.
It was a beautiful morning. I walked down the hill and turned left, walking on the pathway, heading to the west end of the lake.
Lake Bled was formed by a combination of glaciation and tectonics, but it reminded me of the beautiful glacier lakes of my adopted country, Canada, especially Lake Louise in Alberta. It is about 2.5 kilometres long and just under 1.5 kilometres wide, so a nice distance for walking. It has been a favourite destination for Europeans for many centuries.
There is an island in the lake, named appropriately enough, Bled Island. I would visit there in a couple of days. I was surprised to read that it is Slovenia’s only natural island. I passed the embarkation point for the traditional boats to the island, the pletna. They have been used on the lake for several hundred years.
I had decided to do a popular hike which goes up to a point called Mala Osojnica and chose to do it as a loop, going up the steeper and more difficult section first.
The trail was busy with a variety of hikers, lots of children and a few of us older people. A French group was sharing their music with everyone.
It was a little muddy in places but was no harder than what I was used to on my trails back home Newfoundland.
A set of steep metal stairs caused me the most difficulty, but it was mental rather than physical. I have trouble with heights and was glad that I was going up, so that I did not have to look down.
There were great places to enjoy the views of the lake.
The trail going down the other side had been widened, making it an easy, gradual walk down.
Some hikers stopped and pointed into the trees at an antelope. I later identified it as a Chamois, a goat-antelope native to the mountains in Southern Europe. Unfortunately, I prefer to hike with my very light 28 mm fixed lens rather than my zoom, so I could not get a good photo.
Perhaps the best viewpoint was partway down this side.
This was the end of the nice hike. From here to the lake the path was just thick and deep mud, shoes stuck in the mud thick. There was no way around it. I laughed when I saw a young man on the way up wearing bright white shoes. They would not have been white at the top.
I finished the hike at the lake and sat down with a stick to clean the thick layers of mud off my shoes. When I felt presentable, I walked over to a lakeside café where I could sit down with a great view of Lake Bled.
It was time for me to try a famous Lake Bled cream cake.
The Bled cream cake is a puff pastry atop layers of vanilla cream and custard. The cake dates to the 18th century and was an Austro-Hungarian Empire delicacy. The Slovenian version has protected status and is only available from Lake Bled patisseries. There are special rules related to its preparation based on the number seven. The puff pastry is folded seven times before resting overnight. The egg custard is cooked for seven minutes. The cake is cut into seven-by-seven-centimeter squares.
I can assure you that it did not take me seven minutes to eat mine. It was worth the hype.
After I finished my cream cake and coffee, I continued my walk around the lake. There were lots of cyclists, walkers, and well-behaved dogs. I had to keep taking photographs of the lake.
I walked up a long set of stairs to Bled Castle.
The castle was built for Emperor Henry II, ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, in 1004 as an estate on the beautiful Lake Bled. When you are the emperor you get a castle for your lakeside retreat. He donated it to the bishops of Brixen in 1011. The castle remained the residence of the bishops for eight hundred years.
I visited the museum but was too tired to read the history except a bit about the local railway.
I had a latte at the outdoor café where I chatted with a Brazilian man who wanted to talk about airlines. He knew more about Canadian discount airlines than me, which is not saying much since I do very little flying within Canada and then avoid the discount carriers. I found out that a Canadian airline had recently gone bankrupt. I did not know that it had existed.
I had walked about twelve kilometres by the time I made it back to the town area. I was hungry and from what I had learned about the possible difficulties of getting reservations was happy to get a table on the patio at a restaurant next to the lake. I did not expect a gourmet meal, so I was not disappointed with my sausages. It was okay but nothing close to the fantastic meal I had eaten the night before.
This is what the downtown area looks like.
I walked up the hill to the Penzion Kaps.
Dennis greeted me at the desk and suggested a ride with a hotel e-bike to the neighbouring Lake Bohinj for my Sunday activity. It seemed like a great idea. He said it was a quiet route. Back upstairs the internet suggested otherwise. Reviews described the road as quite busy with vehicles. I would have to think about it some more.
I did some more laundry and made my call home. I hoped to sleep a bit longer now that I knew how to darken the blinds.
This featured blog entry was written by Bob Brink from the blog Searching for Magical Moments.
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