Ljlubljana/Bled (Day 2)

So I am currently writing to you from the Internet Cafe at the train station here in Ljlubljana. The Internet at the hostel was slow and there were only three computers. It was also more expensive there. However, it turns out that the Internet here is just as slow. Good times. I did post about 45 more pictures onto the album. Still at France as far as pictures go. Feels like that was such a long time ago, too.

Anyway, today was our day trip to Bled. I was going to wake everyone up at 8, but we didnt actually get up until 845. Not out until almost 10. We got to the train station looking for a train to take to Bled because my guidebook told me that existed. I guess it didnt, so we had to pay for a bus ticket to Bled. Kind of expensive, but it was worth the trip I thought.

We caught the 11 am bus to Bled and it took a little over an hour to get there. Once we got there, we started to look for a map, until it dawned on us that we probably didnt need one since we could clearly see the lake from where we were.

Bled is a small alpine resort. There is a huge lake in the middle of the town. In the middle of the lake, there is a church where you can ring a bell to make a wish. You have to take a row boat or a gondola to get there. My book also said that you could swim and Mia Andrew and I packed our swim stuff to do that because we thought it would be more fun, but it turns out you cant. There is also a huge castle at the top of a hill and a number of other cool things to see nearby. Anyway, this area was quite beautiful and a bit of fresh air after hopping around all these big urban cities in Europe.

We got there and looked a market for a while. Then headed down to the lake front. The water in this lake was very blue, very clean and very clear. While looking around us, we found saw in the distance that people were doing what we could only imagine was luging down a hill in the distance. We wanted to luge during our while in Austria, but since Austria did not really work out, we decided to take this opportunity and worked our way in that direction.

On the way, we stopped to look at some swans. One got really mad at Mia and stole her shoe. She, Gianni, and Andrew fought the swan to get the shoe back, while I filmed everything and laughed. A lot of people nearby did the same.

We eventually got to the place, and it wasnt quite a luge thing, it was more like little carts that you go down on a rail. It was, however, a lot cheaper than we thought it would be, so we got tickets to ride. We took turns so we could get pictures of each other going down the hill. To get up, you have to get onto a ski lift and on the way up, you could see an amazing view of Bled, the lake, and the surroundings. The ride down was kind of fun, but also a little terrifying. The rail was very much not stable, so I had the brakes down for most of the ride. This made everyone else very happy. They all went down for a second time. I stayed back down and laughed at them.

After we were finished with that, we all realized we were hungry. Since this was very much a tourist driven resort town, all the nearby restaurants were very expensive. Ended up just getting kebabs and having a semi picnic in front of the lake. Very nice.

We thought about taking a gondola out to the island, but decided against it in the end. It would have been ten euro for each of us roundtrip just to ring a bell. ...We also wanted to go up to see the castle, but it was a very big hike and Andrew pretty much just glared at us. Regardless, we had a very fun and relaxing day in Bled.

We climbed back up the hill to the bus station and took the bus back here to Ljlubljana. We are probably going to do laundry for the rest of the night and play more Machiavelli. Probably also eat. Tomorrow, we wake up early again and take a train to Venice!