There is nothing better than the sun beating through the window of the balcony door even if it is 5:30.  One thing I like about sleeping in the Alps is that I can have my window open all night and I can hear the sounds of crickets when I fall asleep and birds when I wake up (from the moment I stepped out of the car in Bled there was a Cuckoo bird singing).  This was the first morning that it was totally nice so I basically jumped out of bed and wanted to walk around the lake before breakfast.  The trick was that I also wanted to hike up to a view point en route around the lake.  If you just walk the nicely paved trail around the lake it takes around an hour and a half. 

Lake Bohinj is the largest natural permanent lake in Slovenia and is about 30 minutes from Bled (don’t ask what is the non-permanent largest lake is).  As you drive from Bled to Bohinj you are surrounded by Alps so you always have a nice view.  The road is a nice country road with a lot of curves.  I have yet to get a photo but because Slovenia is so wet (maybe even more than Portland) they hang their hay to dry.  They are cute wood covered drying racks. 
Bohinj seems like an outdoors person’s paradise.  I wish I was writing to tell you I went paragliding off of the mountain we went up but that just isn’t for me.  Instead I pay money to ride the gondola up the mountain and back down.  The gondola is used in the winter to transport the skiers up to their playground.  Stunning ski slopes and cross country trails.  They say that the ski season goes to early May but I didn’t see any snow so maybe this was a quiet year for them.

In the summer, you can pick from a number of hiking trails.  A lot of the hikes recommend mountaineering equipment, map and sometimes a mountain guide.  Since we didn’t have any of that, I guess a hike up in the Alps wasn’t for this trip.  Although I do have my eye on one hike up there.  The description sounds interesting: “Leading along the mountain ridges was the old Italian – Yugoslav border.  Therefore, the area abounds in remains of border stones and various military buildings.”  Anyone want to volunteer to do this hike with me?

Piran is on the Adriatic Sea and you can see Italy to the north and Croatia to the south.  We found a place to eat right on the water.  I really could have stayed at the table all day just staring at the sea.  People just climb down the ladders that are along the walkway and go swimming.  Pretty crazy to me since I saw plenty of jelly fish when I was walking by the fishing boats. 

Slovenia has many caves and I was lucky enough to explore Skocjan today.  It is not the most popular cave in Slovenia but that is just by the standards of tourism.  The most popular cave seems more like a Disneyland ride.  Reading about the caves Slovenia has to offer, this cave seemed more authentic and less touristy.  Of course my ideal cave exploration would be with a headlamp and not 20 people but funny enough our tour included the same Japanese tour group that we saw in Triglav yesterday.  I guess we think alike (however we didn’t pay a couple thousand dollars to come up with the same plan).

What do you when it is raining out?  You head to a cave and then to the Adriatic.  Basically we drove the length of Slovenia in less than 2 hours.  This makes it a reasonable day trip.  Below is a map of where Piran is located.  You can see Croatia and Italy to the south and north.  Let’s just say this is well worth the drive even if gas is expensive. 

Yesterday along the drive through Triglav National Park, we just happened to come across an Alpine Botanical garden.  I was actually hesitant to hike up to it since it was raining pretty heavy but I love taking photos of flowers.  As we hiked up to the garden we heard a tour bus pull up.  It was the same tour group we followed on the hike earlier.  Here are some of my favorite photos at the botanical garden.

The mission today was to visit Triglav National Park, Slovenia’s only National Park.  The weather was a little rainy but that wouldn’t stop our little Polo from climbing up a mountain.  There were 24 hairpin turns on the way up and 26 on the way down.  (So I drove 100 hairpin turns today by the time we made our way back.)  The park was peaceful and not busy at all.  Maybe the rain had something to do with that but that doesn’t stop me from walking around.

The road was actually built by Russian prisoners of war during the first world war.  They built a chapel on the road up and there are a couple of burial sites there from a avalanche.  There were some fresh candles on the grave.

Half of the hairpin turns were cobblestone to help get a better grip on the road.  This is also why I pay extra to rent an automatic car. 🙂  The road actually wasn’t that bad and every turn was numbered and gave you the elevation.  When we reached the summit there was a little hut restaurant.  The temp got down to 6.5 celsius at the top of the mountain.  This is also a popular route for bicycles however due to the weather, I only saw 2.

We did one hike in the middle.  Well we thought it would be a nice hike but really we were just following another tour group thinking that there must be something down a trail.  Little did we know that there wasn’t really much to see that you couldn’t have seen from driving further down the road.  We climbed down for 40 minutes only to come to the road.  Naturally the tour group only hiked down as their bus picked them up at the bottom and that left us as the only suckers having to climb up.

(In the photo of just the face of the mountain see if you can find the image of Ajda.  Adja is a mythical village girl from local lore.)

Just a short drive northwest from Ljubljana is Bled.  Bled is close to the Austrian border and is a huge winter/summer tourist destination for its outdoor activities.   The glacial Lake Bled has a trail around the lake and you have views of the only island in Slovenia and a castle up on the mountain side.  The island contains a church where many locals like to get married.  The church has 99 steps up to the door and it is tradition that the man carries the bride up the stairs and the bride must remain silent.  Many people consider the island to bring good luck.  I will let you know if I have good luck after I visit.  You take a row boat to the lake so we are saving that for hopefully some better weather.

Ljubljana was a lovely city that has some old world charm and modern technology.  All waiters/waitress can print you a receipt from their belt.  When people pay with credit card, people just put their phone on top of a machine at the table.  America is so far behind with credit card technology.  Even the hotel room was high tech.  I never could figure out how to turn the AC or heat on but for once the room cleaning people could tell if people were in the room and didn’t need to knock.  You wave your key in front of this screen outside the door to get in.  Then the screen let’s people know if there are people in the room and even more they can tell if somebody is in the bed.  The people were all very nice and you everyone spoke pretty perfect English.   Most menus were all listed in English, German, Italian and Slovene.  So don’t be afraid to visit Ljubljana if you don’t know Slovene.  You really won’t have any problems communicating or ordering.