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).
