It was only a couple of days before this part of the trip that I realised my planned journey between Venice and Ljubjana would take longer than I realised. There was only one daily night train between the two so instead I had to go by train to Trieste and then take a bus into Slovenia followed by another bus trip between the capital city Ljubjana and my destination of Bled.

Before all that though I had a few hours in the Italian border city of Trieste which was more than enough to see the remains of the old Roman amphitheatre, the Canal Grande and a couple of nice looking buildings.

    

On my arrival in Bled just after 5pm I took a while to find Castel Hostel 1004 bacpackers but all the locals I asked were very nice and helpful as indeed they were throughout my time in Slovenia. They spoke very good English too! With night-time drawing in I walked on down to the lake and then took the short but steep hike upto the castle which supposedly offers some of the best views of the towns centre-piece. I say supposedly as I didn’t go in due to the high price. However, I walked round the back of the castle and scrambled up the rocks and boy was it worth it as the view was amazing.

I haven’t mentioned it yet but Bled is famous for the tiny island on its lake which has nothing but a church on it. Many have described it as being like something out of a fairytale. The heavens opened up when I reached the lake again but I guess that I was lucky that it happened at that moment rather than 20 minutes earlier.

   

I got up at 7am the next morning and took a two hour stroll round the beautiful lake but decided that it wasn’t really worth waiting around to take a gondola over to the church on the island.

  

The view was sufficient enough for me so I headed back to the hostel, checked out and took the 9.30am bus to Ljubjana. My train from there to Zagreb in Croatia wasn’t until mid afternoon so I spent a few hours strolling round the city centre which was pleasant enough but didn’t captivate me too much.