Slovenia: Ljubljana

After we left Lake Bled, we backtracked about 30 minutes towards Ljubljana, Slovenia and checked into our hotel. Our hotel was close to the airport, outside of the city, and surrounded by cornfields.
After we checked in, we drove about 20 minutes into Ljubljana. We followed the blue "P" signs and ended up in a parking garage underneath the main square. When we came up the stairs, we were in the middle of the square. 


This is the first view we had when we came up from the parking garage. I knew nothing about this city beforehand and it turned out to be very worthwhile. It has an old castle as seen above, little streets, a river that runs through the middle of town, and gorgeous mountainous view from the fortress. 

It’s not as hard as it looks; it’s pronounced (Loob-li-on-uh), and it’s a quaint little city. Jeff even claimed he would live there. The locals say it’s not too big, not too little. We loved it. There were lots of cobble-stone walking streets to enjoy, different bridges, musicians, fortresses, etc. It was a perfect old European town. We enjoyed walking around and looking at things.

The Town Hall...we assumed. 

Triple Bridge

This bridge was see-through. You could look down underneath!

There are a couple of different famous bridges: The dragon bridge and the triple bridge. We took plenty of pictures. The triple bridge you'll see near the end of the post...

The DRAGON Bridge

I wish they were bigger so I could put my head in their mouths or something, but they were still pretty cool.

Standing on the Dragon Bridge with the fortress to the left. 

We love our kebabs. 


There is a fortress on the hill. We’ve seen lots of them throughout Europe, which means that we’ve hiked a lot of large hills…which means my feet ache and my knees kill. I was definitely huffing and puffing.

There were lots of cool lookout spots. We went into old prison cells. There were buttons made out of bones, and small rock rooms. During the First World War, Italian P.O.W.s did most of the reconstruction work surrounding and leading up to the fortress.

On the battlements--there's a restaurant right beside us. 

Cool old doors--this one had a peep hole

There was a huge hallway that led to a big door that was an entrance to...somewhere. On the ceiling was an original painting from probably a thousand or so years ago. It's a coat of arms.

Really, really, REALLY old painting.

The blue hippie thing in the middle is a video that plays and probably tells what it is you're seeing...I wouldn't know--I don't speak Slovenian.

Jeff was coaxing me out of the hallway because I was just standing there, but I told him to "wait--I have to imagine myself hundreds of years ago walking down the hallway, escorted by guards, on my way to prison." It was a pretty cool picture in my head. It's a little overwhelming when you think of things that way. It's just as mind-blowing to comprehend things of the past as it is to think of the future, or eternity.

Here's the Triple Bridge. See the stairs? They're on either side of the main bridge--they just lead to lower streets--but that's why it's called the triple bridge.

An open city center by the Triple Bridge. 

There is a little chapel in the fortress that we went to, and a man was packing up his things. We figured he worked there during the day, and we all started talking. His English was very good, and he had his daughter with him. She only knew a few words, and liked the braid in my hair:) Jeff asked the man what he did, so he took out a paper, asked me to write down my name, and he did calligraphy. He gave it to us as a “gift”, so we gave his daughter a “gift” of 2 euros and told her to buy ice cream. It was fun talking with him. We exchanged contact addresses—said he had meant to come to America years ago, but his daughter was born, and he’s been meaning to ever since. He was nice—not just trying to cheat us out of our money like lots of people who sell things to tourists.

Here's the ceiling of the chapel--it's pink.

View of Ljubljana from another point on the fortress.

Fortress wall

Then, it was back to our hotel and to SLEEP.

Slovenia: Lake Bled

Wednesday night, while lying in bed, Jeff decided to go on a trip…Friday morning. On Thursday I spent my time searching cheap hotels and looking up cool places to stop by with their addresses and the history behind them. It was a 4 hour drive from our home, and our first stop was Lake Bled in Slovenia. I like letting the pictures tell some of the story:

We have been trying to decide when and where to go on another trip lately. We wanted to go somewhere close and inexpensive and decided that Slovenia and Italy would be a good choice, we just didn't know when would be the best time. On a Wednesday night, I decided that taking that Friday off of work would be the best and that we should go. Plus, it was the last weekend with our car before we returned it to the dealership. It gets really good kilometerage and so I wanted to use it to save money on gas. (We are now driving a car that some of the American workers used).

So we left early Friday morning to head to Lake Bled, Slovenia. We have wanted to go here for several months and were very excited to finally get the chance. 

this is just off of the internet--to give you the whole view

A fortress on top of the cliff to Jeff's right.

There is a fortress on the cliffs by the lake with Bled Castle at the top.

Our first intention was to have lunch on the shore. Some ducks came and shared with us. The next destination was summer tobogganing down the ski slope right by the lake. It gave a sweet view of the lake as we rode the lift up the mountain. Tobogganing was awesome. I didn’t hit the brake as much as I thought I would!

On our walk around the lake, we came to a ski resort. Josie had researched it and had found that in the summer, they have one person roller-coaster rides on a track down the mountain. We watched some of the people come down the mountain and decided to each buy a ride. We took the chairlift up to the top and enjoyed the view of Lake Bled. When we got to the top, I went first and weaved my way down the mountain. It was a blast. I could have done it all day.

You can see the metal track that curves down the mountain.

Cool looking hotel next to the lake. 

We walked around part of the lake and took pictures.

cool tunnel

the island and church 

in this picture you can see the fortress just to the left of the church, up on that little hill 

We found a boat rental spot. Jeff rowed out to the island, and we walked around it.

Josie enjoying the ride out to the island. However, she rowed us back and I enjoyed the ride.

 

This is a natural island. They built a church on it, with 99 steps leading up to the chapel. Tradition says that a groom that carries his bride up the 99 steps to the church will have good marriage for the rest of his life. Jeff wanted to carry me up of course, but I said we were already married so it wouldn’t count:)

the church

the church is dedicated to Mary (behind me)

We thought that would be a pretty sweet set up--that house built on rocks in the middle of the forest with a perfect view of the lake and island

There is a “wishing bell” in the church that you can ring in order to get your wish, but it costs money to go inside, so we just listened to all of the lucky people ringing the bell, knowing that their wishes were sure to come true.

It was my turn to row back. It was a struggle at first, but once I put my body into it like I had seen them do on “Ben Hur” in the slave ship, I got it down. Parked it very nicely, too, I might add. It was so fun.

Taken by a Canadian couple

We walked back to our car, enjoying the scenery and avoiding sun-bathers as much as possible. We wanted to see Vintgar Gorge and Iglica Falls, but they could not be found.

Josie had researched the area and found that there was a cool waterfall called Iglica Falls. We typed the address into the GPS that we borrowed from my co-worker and started driving. It took us off of the main road and up through a village with very narrow and steep streets. I kept telling Josie that there should be more cars around if this is a tourist attraction, but the GPS told us to keep going, so we did. We kept going up and up and up into the mountains. I drove up the switch-backs until we came to what the GPS called "our destination," a.k.a. a random point in the forest. 

Since there were no people, no waterfall in sight, and nowhere to turn around, I kept driving. Eventually we came to houses on top of the mountain and we were able to take some cool pictures and turn around.

So, we went on our way to our little hotel in the country; it was surrounded by fields of corn and mountains,  and only a few minutes away from Slovenia’s capital city, Ljubljana (Loob-li-on-uh). After we checked in at the hotel, that was our next stop.

Lake Balaton & Tapolca Cave

The day before our anniversary, Jeff wanted to go to Lake Balaton for the occasion. It’s only about an hour away, so we headed off in the afternoon. We didn’t get to swim in its waters because it was an overcast day. But it was beautiful, and we had fun.

Swans and ducks were prevalent--there were bird feed vending machines nearby that visitors could buy from. We watched other people waste their money on bread crumbs so they could scatter it among the rocks and watch the birds fight over it.

The swans were comfortable with our close proximity

the docks

Jeff, being the innate traveler that he is, looked up some nearby caves in Tapolca, on the other side of the lake. The fun thing about these caves is that you can take a boat through them! We waited in line for a long time, but eventually got into boats that looked like a large, oval tuna can. The ride was short and could trigger one’s claustrophobia, but it was fun and cool. Pictures were hard to get because of the lighting…

we had to duck a lot during the trip...the water was pretty

We drove back home after our little trip, in time for a surprise birthday party for one of our translators. We hosted it because we have the roomiest apartment. The party planner remembered our anniversary, and made us a cake as well:)

Someone was a little anxious to eat the cake--cut it before we could get a picture