Monday, April 18, 2016

Lake Bled and Ljubljana

You've seen pictures of Lake Bled, right? Right?!?!

It is every bit as gorgeous in real life.

Happy, beautiful day.

You can ride a boat called a pletna to the island.  It is kind of like a gondola. 

Or.... you can rent a row boat and row yourselves. We thought that sounded like much more fun.  

Once out on the island, we had a picnic on the grounds and visited the church. Sadly, the church is being heavily renovated, but each kiddo still took a turn ringing the wishing bell.  The two big kids and I also climbed the tower while Rob got the required ice cream cones with the two little kids.

I couldn't let Rob have all the rowing fun, so I took the oars on the trip back to shore. I did grow up next to a lake after all, and I know my way around a row boat.

Here's the view from the other side of the island with the castle on the hill, and the mountains just peeking above the clouds in the background.  We did walk around the castle grounds a little one day, but decided not to take the tour.  Lake Bled was best enjoyed from the outdoors for sure.
 
Another day we drove to the capitol city of Ljubljana. Slovenia is roughly the size of New Jersey, so nothing we drove to was much more than an hour away.  Here the kids are standing next to the Dragon Bridge.  The dragon has been the symbol for this city for a long, long time.

We walked around the market and checked out souvenirs as well before enjoying lunch from a couple of food vendors.  I should have taken a picture of my burger, it was the size of my head.  Toby ordered one too, and Rob ended up having to eat half of each of them.

We rode the funicular up to the Ljubljana Castle.

It was perfect weather for enjoying the views and walking off a giant hamburger.

Ljubljana is Europe's Green City for 2016.  I don't know exactly what that means; but we don't particularly like cities and we could see ourselves living in this one. This is the view from the castle's highest tower.

From front to back this is the market hall, the Cathedral of St. Nicholas (was closed during our visit,) and Ljubljana Castle at the very top. I like Slovenian arcitecture more than I thought I would. I guess I thought there would be more Soviet sort of influence from the Tito/Yugoslavia years, and there is some of that. But mostly the buildings look a little Bavarian, and even a bit Italian, but cleaner, simpler, and less adorned. I really like it.

1 comment:

Aubrey said...

Wow! So gorgeous! Love the pic of you rowing and the fact that your family eats as much ice cream as mine. :)