I Can (kind of) See Clearly Now

Lake Bled, in Slovenia, was recently in an article on CNN.com listing the 10 most beautiful lakes in the world (read the article here). We had been planning to visit based on the recommendations of several people we know, but we haven't been able to find a good time for it. When we looked at the map and saw it was only 2 hours from Zagreb, we thought this would be the perfect time. Again, as with Plitvice Lakes Park outside of Zagreb, the weather was not ideal for the picturesque town and lake that is Bled, but we still enjoyed it.

After checking in at the Villa Bled, the former Presidential residence, we took to the trail along the perimeter of the lake. It rained on and off, but we were able to make the full loop, which was roughly 4 miles. We stopped along the way for lunch at Gallus, we claimed to have the best pizza in Bled. It fascinates me when restaurants and cafes boast to have the best of something in the city, state, country, or universe. It's one thing to put it on a sign and note the person or publication that said it, and it's another to state it as an unequivocal fact, which is what they did in this case. It also intrigues me as to whether certain customers actually make decisions based on these lofty claims. Do people walk by this restaurant and see that the sign says best pizza in Bled and believe it? In this specific case though, I'm not sure how much of an accomplishment it is to be the best pizza in Bled anyway. There may not even be other pizza places. Anyway, lunch was pretty good, and we weren't staying long enough to find out if there were other pizza offerings around town, so we accepted it and moved on with our lives.

We walked across the street and ate cream cake at the Park Hotel, which claimed to invent the recipe. Bled is not a modest town.

It started to pour again right after we returned to our hotel. We napped for a couple of hours and then ate dinner at the hotel. It was actually included in our rate, so we figured why not. There was nowhere in town we were dying to go anyway. The food wasn't bad. My lamb entree was quite good actually and we both enjoyed the dessert of panna cotta and strawberry ice cream. A funny note here is that at breakfast the next morning (also at the hotel and also included in our rate), the woman who waited on us asked us if everything was okay with the dinner the previous night because the men who work in the kitchen were concerned because we didn't eat everything. It was a four course meal. We are normal sized human beings. We can't eat four full courses. We always talk about how we don't understand how people can. We've found that at restaurants in Europe, they do seem to get insulted if you don't clean your plate completely. We're not going to make ourselves sick just to avoid insulting a waiter. We explained to her what occurred at dinner and hopefully we didn't give them more reason to hate Americans.

The sun came out for an hour and we took full advantage of it by taking a row boat out from the hotel and headed to Bled Island. It only took about 15 minutes, 5 of which I spent figuring out where to sit and how to get the boat to move in the direction I wanted. We walked around the small island where the Church of the Assumption of Mary sits. It only takes about 5 minutes to walk around. After seeing all there was to see, we headed back, packed up our stuff, and headed back to Bratislava.

The drive back was uneventful. We ran a few errands while we had the car, and now it's back to work tomorrow. It was good for both of us to have a relaxing, even if short, vacation.

View more pictures of Bled here.