Slovenia: Lake Bled and Lake Bohinj Day Trip (September 2016)

Our plan today was to visit Mount Vogel, Lake Bohinj, and Lake Bled. We drove about 1.5 hours from the hotel to reach our first stop, Lake Bohinj. At 2.6 miles long and 0.62 miles wide, it covers 790 acres and is the largest permanent lake in Slovenia. The lake lies within Triglav National Park, which is part of the Julian Alps. Bohinj is a glacial lake dammed by a moraine, which allows visitors to fish, swim, and do other water sports. Here, you can ride the funicular up to a panoramic viewpoint on the top of Mount Vogel (about 5,000 feet) in order to enjoy spectacular views of the mountains and lake.

Next, we drove about 30 minutes back towards Ljubljana to reach Lake Bled, the star of today’s show. Lake Bled was originally a health resort for the wealthy and powerful, including by Yugoslav dictator Tito, who had a villa there (which you can still visit). Lake Bled is 6,960 feet long and 4,530 feet wide, with a maximum depth of 97 feet. The lake lies in a picturesque environment surrounded by mountains and forests with a small island (Blejski Otok) in the middle. You reach the island by taking a 20-minute ride on a 20-passenger traditional flat-bottomed wooden boat called a “pletna”, a sort of gondola-like row boat with a canopy. (The profession of pletna oarsman is a skill handed down in families from generation to generation.) Visitors can also reach the island by swimming, as we saw some adventurous young adults do! A 99 stone-step Baroque stairway leads from the lake to the Pilgrimage Church of the Assumption of Mary (Cerkev Marijinega Vnebovzetja). Traditionally, when people marry at the church, it is considered good luck for the groom to carry his bride up the steps before he rings the "wishing" bell inside the church. The church’s 171-foot bell tower was built in the 17th century and is decorated with Gothic frescos. While on the island, we sampled the potica (Slovenian nut roll cake) from the Poticnica shop/cafe. (We had already sampled the famous Bled Cream Cake two days previously at Degenijan Restoran in Rakovica near Plitvice Lakes.) On our boat ride back to shore, we saw medieval Bled Castle standing prominently above the lake (although we declined to visit).