Lake Bled to Ljubljana, Slovenia

Lake Bled to Ljubljana, Solvenia

This day was an interesting travel day. Our mission was to get to Ljubljana and then hop on a late night train to Budapest, Hungary. This wonderful train would depart at 1:50 in the nite and hopefully get to Budapest tomorrow by noon. Well, that's what we thought.

There was no hurry to get to Ljubljana, so we took our time making breakfast. It was another drizzly day and we still had not paddled out to the island in the middle of Lake Bled. We decided to go for tit and walk around the edge of the lake to where our apartment owner knew the boat guy. They gave us an hour extra on the rental which was already 10€. Ouch! The girl that helped us was really kind and said go for it. It's rainy and there is no wait for the boats. I can only imagine what this would be like in full sun with all the tourists. It was a funny sight to see all three of us hop into a 12 foot long wooden rowboat. It was attached to the dock with a chain and after disconnecting it, we pushed off. I was on paddle duty and tried to navigate rowing backwards towards the island. We kept turing to the left as I rowed and I could not tell why. Upon further inspection, we noticed the the left (port) paddle was smaller that the right one. Well, that will do it. The rest of the time out to the island I was fighting the pull of the paddles, favoring the weak one and going light on the large one. It drizzled on us the whole time, but it created a dark atmosphere on the way. We docked the boat just below the 99 stairs that take you up to the church. Pretty cool, but first, we wanted to walk the perimeter of the island to see what was there. A little trail took us along the engender and we could look into the water below. It was very clear and had a light blue and green tint. Visibility was about 15 feet deep or a little more and you could see fish all around. Occasionally, we saw s ome really large ones maybe 2 feet long just chilling there close to the bottom watching the smaller ones closer to the surface. After the hike around, we decided to head up to the church. People were ringing the bells from the top and on the 1/2 hour and hour, the church would blast out with the large bells. On the top we decided not to go into the church. They wanted another 4€ to do that. And now, we are churched out. After one in Zagreb with a model of a body in a tomb, I kind of find them tacky. More o that later. We descended the stairs and got back to the boat for the wet paddle back. It was a peaceful calming ride and set us up for some really nice photos.

We grabbed some lunch in the local market and headed back to the apartment. They let us put our bags behind the counter and we then headed to the bus station. The station was only a 3 minute walk away and had a really easy to use automatic ticket machine. We had looked at it earlier, but were unsure of what ticket to get for Ljubljana. Lucky for us, there was a nice young man there to help. He spoke English and showed us what to do. While in the process, we found out that he worked for the bus station. Thanks bro! We then had our tickets and the bus was there in a matter of minutes.

When we got into Ljubljana, we had made a few friends and were chatting right off the bus. Then, the driver came down and asked is someone was missing something. He was holding Katherine's iPod. Oops! Katherine freaked out and thanked him profusely. He even took a hug and smiled about it. Katherine never loses anything and this time someone was there to help out. We owe him! We have run into other people that would have see that as a tip.

Now in the middle of Ljubljana we had several hours to kill. We decided to walk some of the streets we had not seen and get a bite to eat. We found a nice park in front of the parliament building and had a seat for over an hour. People watching in the parks is plenty of entertainment. Trust me. There were many locals and tourists to watch. Surprisingly, there we're many children and dogs. Not wild dogs, but ones on leashed out to play.

The hours passed and we went back to the station. We knew there was a free toilet and water. Soon enough, at 9:30 the attendant locked it up and we were needing water. Katherine and Andrew walked way down to the the other bathroom in desperation . There was nothing open to buy a bottle and it looked like the station was closing. There were many people waiting in the station for our same train from the looks of the sleeping arrangements. We just laid out on the dirty floor like a homeless person and slept for a bit. I was able to sleep for a few hours, but when it got closer to get on the train, I could not sleep. 1:50am came quick and we made it on without a problem. The train originated from Venice and the sleeper cars we full as well as the couchettes. Oh well, now we are stuck in an airliner seat for 9+ hours. Here we go!

I am writing this while on the train and it is still chugging along. It's noon the next day and we are still hours out from Budapest. It's close and quiet on here. Skies are cloudy and Hungary looks very lush so far. We'll see how this city turns out.