While the sun made way for clouds the highways changes into a small road. The change of roads reveal the border is near. We get off the main road, enter a village, drive up a hill and there it is ‘Welcome to Slovenia’. Suddenly we are in Slovenia and when we get to the other side of the hill a new highway is visible.
We drive towards the North, Bled will be our destination for today. Unfortunately for us the raindrops turn into snow flakes and if we wouldn’t notice this our feet would tell us. I’m sure my toes turned blue because oh my is it cold in the van. Every time we are cold we wonder why we haven’t fixed the heater. Probably it’s because we thought we would drive towards summer now winter.
After one and a half hour we finally arrive in Bled. Bled is a very famous lake of Slovenia and near the border with Austria. On a hill a castle is visible and on a small island in the middle of the lake is a church with some houses. The town itself isn’t that interesting. I guess in the summer when Covid-19 didn’t exist it must have been great to be here but now… Shops are closed, it’s cold, people are nowhere to be seen. It kind of feels like a ghost town. We drive around the lake and back into Bled to find ourselves some food. Yuri sees a pizza delivery car and we decide to follow it, soon we find ourselves near an ice sporthal and at the pizzeria ordering beers and pizza. We ignore the strange looks and the parking machine and eat the pizza in the van.
Our stomachs are full, our bodies a bit warmer and it’s time to find ourselves a spot to stay for the night. We found a nice parkinglot at a hotel. Normally one is not allowed to stay in the parking area of a hotel but the hotels are closed so who cares, right?
Well, the next day when the workers of the hotel arrived we were kindly asked to leave 😉
My mum told us about Bohinj lake, a place where she stayed with her parents, my grandparents. But, before we would visit the lake we decided to have a hike.. or two. We hiked near a gorge and to a wonderful waterfall. In Slovenia almost everything is closed and they hope to reopen in June. Unfortunately for us that also means that gorges and waterfalls are closed. Really? Yep, to maintain the pathways they request a small entrance fee. But without tourists there is no reason to have these places open so everything is closed. Luckily we often find ways around it and sometimes it’s good to ignore some signs. Sorry, but if you only follow rules and regulations your life’s going to be decided by governments and not by yourself. We live our own life’s so we sometimes listen and sometimes we don’t 🙂
Finally we went to Bohinj lake and wow! Where Bled is definitely a tourist destination Bohinj is more natural. Yes, it’s also a place where lots of tourists go to but there is more nature around it. It feels a bit more unspoiled and inhabited than Bled. It is beautiful and we actually saw some dear at the lake and about thousands mice. They are everywhere here. Like the owls and birds left and the mice took over.
We found a nice spot to stay for the night, at a waterfall and even though it was -8 degrees we were warm and cosy in the van (thermo underwear and layers helps). It’s probably the coldest night we have experienced up to now but this time we were prepared.
Love, Milene & Yuri
