Beautiful Lake Bled

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After a comfortable long plane trip from my hometown, the most exciting part of which was of course flying over the Alps near Austria and Bavaria, just half an hour before I landed in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. Before I came to this tiny country in Central Europe, the most difficult thing was the strange name of the capital, and after consulting so many articles and forums and finally I have found out the correct pronouce of Ljubljana is just simply "Lu-Bli-Yana".

On my first day in Bled was almost too easy, the bus system and everything is so easily understand, almost everything is catered for lazy travellers. The little town is surrounded by mountains, old Bled Castle up of the cliff and little church island in the middle of the lake, and it's also similar to Kotor in Montenegro, many cafes and Italian restaurants are everywhere. I order Marinate-Stuffed Squid, one of the local Balkan dishes, and can be found everywhere in Balkan restaurants, this name sounds so familar to me and turned out to be the exactly the same thing and taste I ever had in Montenegro, despite the name of the dish, how they described and the bill came out was almost double the price of what I paid in Kotor (Euro 6 vs Euro 11), however it was tasty indeed.

On my second day in Bled, I joined 3glav Adventures for whole day adventure trip to Julian Alps and Bohinj. I was picked up at 7:45am along with other travellers from Australia, Canada, Britain, Sweden and myself with the driver, drove to 40km north where the National Park located.

6 of us, climbed the mountains, jumped off the bridges and climbed thru the cliffs again and swimming near the little but stunning waterfall, even thou the water was surprisingly freakin' cold, it was really nice experience and almost dying from laughs.

The rafting session started right after our lunch near Bohinj, and it was really great and fun, when we arrived the starting point, we were given all the gears, wetsuit and life jacket we need, everything was well instructed by the very fit looking Slovenian rafting anchor man who incharged of the raft and paddle commands, and were also given the safety briefing, but none of us had any rafting experience before and therefore fun excitement was promised for sure. Just before we went on the raft, the British guy asked what's the current temperature degree of the water now, and I heard the words "8 to 10", oh my god ....EIGHT? and I was almost given up the rafting session, but I know I wasn't the first one doing rafting in this season, and if I giving up at this point, I have to walk at least 2 hours to reach where the raft finishes and fetch them, so no choice and I rather get cold.

The water was lazily slow and not too deep, it was really clear and saw fishes swimming, the anchor guy promised that we will have at least 3 rapids despite the low water level in this dry season, and maybe it was moving too slow at some part of the river, the guy asked us to jump off the raft and swim as it was hard to move the raft with everyone on it, and again I had no choice so I jump, the water level was up to my neck, frezzing and I couldn't paddle myself and move properly. About an hour and half, we finally reached the ending point of our rafting session, we were all wet, frezzing than snow but it was really crazily fun to do rafting in this beautiful cold river.

Lake Bled is one of the most beautiful lake I have ever seen, it's crytal emerald clear, very clean, quiet and peacefully calm, I can't remeber how many photos I have taken as I walked around the lake, but the photos can't do any real justice of the lake, so you really have to come and take a look yourself. Slovenia was just what I wanted for a nice, quiet little weekend away from anywhere in Europe. It might be little unknown but its's fantastic country with beautiful people, lovely towns and famous cakes and wines, and hopefully it won't be long before my next visit this gorgeous country again in the near future.

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