Day 55 Bled to Ljubljana

We decided to start early to hopefully miss the bus loads of tourists we were expecting to descend on the tiny island with the church in the middle of Lake Bled. We hired our own rowboat and M was even wearing his black and white striped Venetian gondola style tshirt. The weather was perfect and we had that part of the lake to ourselves as we crossed to the island then moored our boat for a quick walk around the island just as boat loads of people started arriving. We would love to know who was the smart person who decided that they would charge €3 a tourist to ring the church bell and list it as a "must do", it was ringing non stop, ding ding ding ....ka-ching ka-ching ka-ching!

We had a little bit of trouble getting back into our boat as a bunch of Asian tourists had started using it for a prop for their photos, M was under a bit of pressure setting off as they all filmed us rowing the boat back, luckily we were off to a good start but it was embarrassing when we realised halfway across that we had been rowing it backwards!

It was such a perfect day for a walk we set off for the 6km walk around Lake Bled, first stop was in Bled town to have morning tea on the lake and sample the famous cream cake that the area is famous for, which is very similar to a light vanilla slice with cream, and by the look of the cream filled beak of the sparrow on our table the bird life enjoy it just as much.

An international rowing regatta was being held on the lake and by the time we arrived at the finishing line they were awarding medals, its difficult to imagine a more  beautiful spot to have a regatta, except for the continual ringing of the island church bell, ding ding ding ....ka-ching ka-ching ka-ching!

We had been told that Vintgar Gorge was closed as they'd had a very bad winter with flooding and rock collapses so were still cleaning up the area to make it safe but we decided to go along for a look anyway and there was access for a little way.

From there is was on to the Slovenian capital Ljubljana, on arriving at our apartment M was asked if he was Slovenian as his Italian surname is apparently very common in Slovenia. We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening at the bars and cafes along the river in Ljubljana which is a very pretty capital city.