After exploring the castle and caves, we drove towards the mountains in the north to stay for the night. We woke to only a 10 minute drive to see the infamous Lake Bled of Slovenia. Everything about this place looked fake- the colors, the scenery… pictures just don’t do it justice! We had an adventurous day of hiking up Mala Osojnica, swimming, enjoying a traditional pletna boat ride to the island, and indulging in their famous regional cream cake.

The 30 minute hike was a dirt trail that wound its way up the mountain with areas of hairpin turns similar to the Amalfi Coast and areas abundant with stones or roots and one mega-steep stairway, but the views at the top were quite spectacular! Although the weather was still quite warm, the water was not warm by any means and it was very rocky; yet I’m glad that we braved the cold and the uneven floor bottom to wade into the blue waters if only for a minute. The Blejska Kremšnita, or Bled cream cake, is a famous Slovenian traditional dish. It has a light, crisp crust with a light custard topped with whipped cream. It looks heavy but it’s jiggles like jello and tastes fluffy! A simply divine treat post-hiking! A boat ride on the traditional pletna’s was expensive but it was a relaxing way to see the island and learn about some of Slovenia’s traditions.

* The Pletna boat is a 7 meter long and 2 meter wide wooden boat which is powered by a pletnar in standing. Its history is expected to reach beyond the unverified data already in the 12th century, where the official beginnings date back to 1740. It is a wooden flat-bottomed boat with a spiked finish on the bow and expanded on the stern with a characteristic threshold that allows the passengers to enter the pletna. The boat is powered by a special technique called “Stehrudder technic” that means rowing in standing. Their ancestors took the name after the German word for “plateboot,” which means a flat-bottomed boat. The rights to ownership of pletna and lake transport were granted during the reign of Empress Maria Theresa, to farmers who received the assigned worse cultivated land. Most of them originated from the village of Mlino on the southeastern shore of Lake Bled. Today on the lake there are 23 pletna and boatmen operating within the boat company. *

As the afternoon rolled around we left the gorgeous outdoors to head to Ljubljana. There we took in a little of the bustling capitol and its old town.

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