Blogs from Bled, Upper Carniola, Slovenia, Europe - page 8

Having walked around Lake Bled yesterday, we decided to return to this scenic gem today and take a boat ride out to the little island with the church on it. With both the sun and the temperature climbing, we were glad to sit under the awning of the large gondola waiting for the required number of people to fill the seats before we left. A handsome young man then proceeded to propel our gondola with his two large oars all the way to the island, a half hour trip. Out on the water a light breeze cooled us and we enjoyed making no effort at all, until we landed and looked at the steep steps up to the church. However, with good shade we were at the top in no time and wandering around the complex ... read more

T'was a heavy grey-skied morning, and a hung over, dehydrated Zeibura waddled across Václavák to hlavní nádraží pondering all the things he had forgotten to pack which might be moderately useful. The 7.16 to České Budějovice accompanied by the two carriages continuing across the border to Linz had been waiting on the platform for a long time, as when we reached it, it was already packed full. My heavy head resulting from last night's beerfest to celebrate my birthday had to be shaken off forcefully, and the exact completion of my 24th orbit around the sun (9:30am CET) was spent standing next to the toilet, dealing with a group of noisy and annoying scout kids gallivanting about the corridors. We then got a compartment with a couple of nice Czech guys at České Budějovice which we ... read more

Hi all, Friday 3rd June The final toll road of Italy took us around the NE corner and through the slither of Italian land that lies between the Alps and the Adriatic sea, we headed on via Trieste and down to the border. The first border crossing was into Slovenia and as Slovenia is now in the EU we didn't need to stop so we drove straight in to add another country to our list. Today we were just passing through Slovenia so after around 30 mins or so driving along a busy stretch of road we came to our second border crossing, into Croatia. Here we had to show our passports which was a first since Gibraltar but with no troubles we drove in and yet another new country was added, it was also a ... read more

Shortly after arriving in Zagliacco in northern Italy, we spent a day going by steam train from the border town of Gorizia to Bled, a beautiful lakeside town in Slovenia. We were greeted by musicians and train attendants in traditional dress, travelled in 3rd class carriages and had a refreshment car with food and drink and a Slovenian Post Master in a special section to take our postcards. The Trans-Alpine railway was one of the last majestic projects of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, completed in 1909 to link Central Austria, Bohenia and Bavaria with Trieste on the Adriatic. This section of the line has the largest stone arch bridge in the world (at 85m) and a 6327m tunnel (took 10 minutes) through the mountains at the end of a long climb up from the plains of Italy. ... read more

Geo: 46.3692, 14.1136 So, our second day in Bled we decided to raft down one of the rivers. Chris has been talkin about doing rafting for years, and it is DIRT CHEAP, like ROBBERY, in Slovenia. It was a mere 28euro/person. If you hop over to Switzerland, you'll pay 4x as much for the same thing. Granted, the huge snow melt hadn't happened yet, so these were only Class II rapids... which still beats the laughable Class I i did back home a couple years ago. lol, one day, when we have more moneys, we'll venture into harder stuff. Anyway, our guide was pretty cool and chatted it up with us the whole way. It was a pretty lazy river with only a few sections with small rapids. So that means more paddling I suppose, lol. ... read more