Lake Bled

Last week was rainy and cold.  This week was just the opposite: sunny and warm every day.  In fact, there's a running joke here that we've heard a few times about how when it gets warm we'll wonder if anyone in Ljubljana has a job...we saw that in full force this week as every outdoor cafe on the sunny side of the river was packed all day long.

Because it was so nice, we decided to take our first road trip in the family station wagon and drove up to Lake Bled yesterday afternoon.  We packed ourselves into the car without a centimeter to spare in the backseat (we will need to get a picture of this, it's comical).  After a brief struggle at the petrol station trying to figure out how to open the fuel door (think Chevy Chase...only Chevy didn't need his wife and a Slovenian man who didn't speak any English to figure it out...and Chevy's wife didn't constantly remind him of this afterward), we headed up into the mountains.

Lake Bled is a beautiful mountain lake town, just forty minutes from Ljubljana, and is one of Slovenia's most popular destinations.  As with many old Slovenian towns, the focal points are a castle and a church: there is a castle perched high on a cliff overlooking the lake and a cathedral on an island in the middle of the lake.  We had lunch outdoors in the hot (yes, hot) sun and then took a stroll around the lake.  The kiddos loved the swans and ducks and Rosetta continued her new hobby of saying "Dober dan" to all passersby.

Most importantly, all went well with the new wheels and we (me) only stalled the wagon twice there and back.  The most excitement came on the way home as we were turning left, a block away from our parking spot, and couldn't figure out the traffic signal.  I just trusted the guy's horn behind me and went.  A little nerveracking...it's one thing to not know what you're doing; it's another to not know what you're doing while driving a stick.