This morning we woke the kids up so that we could eat breakfast and then get on the bus on time. We left for Plitvička Jezera at 8:30 and arrived there around 9 and met Koral to take a tour of the lakes.
We started at the Great Waterfall, which is the tallest waterfall in Croatia and walked down from the top of the canyon to the bottom where all the lakes are.
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| The Great Waterfall of Plitvice Lakes |
We took a bunch of pictures at the base of the Great Waterfall and then hiked up the canyon along the boardwalk past all the small lakes that have been formed over the millennia. The whole hike took about two hours or so and we ended up at a rest area with a restaurant, cafe, ice cream stand, souvenir shop and bathrooms.
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| Looking Just Left of the Great Waterfall |
After we rested a little and got some ice cream we hopped on a boat that took us across one of the large lakes and then hiked up to a hotel to meet up with Ivan and Nemanja. It would have been nice to spend the whole day in Plitvička Jezera and see the rest of the limestone waterfalls, but we had to drive to Ljubljana, Slovenia to pick up our next area guide and to drop off and say goodbye to Ivan.
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| On the Boardwalk |
The drive to Ljubljana was about four hours so we stopped at a rest stop somewhere in the middle and grabbed some lunch at a Burger King there. Unfortunately we didn't realize there was a Marche rest stop that would have been better food and probably quicker because the Burger King got slammed with a couple of tour buses in addition to ours.
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| They Don't Look Too Happy to Be Eating Burger King |
After we finished lunch we got back on the road and made it to Ljubljana. It was kind of abrupt, but we said our goodbyes to Ivan and hello to our Slovenian guide, Ksenja. She took us around Ljubljana for a quick tour of a few different places and then showed us an open kitchen that happens every Friday in a small square.
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| Friday Market Night |
A bunch of different restaurants and vendors set up stalls and cook and sell their food every Friday and she said people come from all over to go to the event. We walked around, but didn't get much since she said we would have plenty of places to eat in Bled, but Maddy saw the paella and yelled, "RICE!!!" So we had to get her some.
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| Paella |
Charlene got the boys some fried pizzas, Julie and Charlene got gyros and my parents got some pad thai that LB ended up liking.
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| Pizza! |
After we got our food we went back to the main square to meet with our guide and then walk back to the bus to go to Bled.
Ljubljana
It was only about a 45 minute drive to Bled and when we arrived Ksenja had Nemanja drive us around the lake a little bit so that Paul and Andrea could see it more, since they are leaving tomorrow morning. After we checked into the hotel we showered the kids before heading out because it was getting late.
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| On the Way to Bled |
We ended up leaving a while after everyone else so we decided to have a family dinner with just the four of us. One of the restaurants I had bookmarked was just at the bottom of the stairs from the hotel so we decided to try it and luckily they had room. It was called Ošterija Peglez'n and it was good. Christal got the fish soup and fortunately Maddy wanted that too, LB got the kids pasta pomodoro, which he finished even though he said he wasn't hungry, and I had domači skutini štruklji z gobicami, which were cheese filled dumplings with a mushroom sauce.
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| Domači Skutini Štruklji z Gobicami |
After LB finished eating he was getting tired and wanted to go back to the hotel so I took him up and got his toothbrush and floss out and then headed back to the restaurant. When I returned Maddy and Christal had finished eating and we got a text from Julie telling us where they were eating and it happened to be one of my bookmarks because of their Bled Cream Cake, so after we paid and changed Maddy's diaper we headed over to Kavarna Park to join them for dessert.
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| Bled Cream Cake |
The cream cake was made up of four different layers, starting with puff pastry, then a thick layer of pastry cream, a layer of whipped cream and topped with another layer of puff pastry and powdered sugar. For how thick it was it was relatively light tasting and went really well with coffee.
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| Yeh-Yeh Enjoyed the Cream Cake |
We also tried a gelato flavor, sladogled which translates to ice cream with a view that they advertised as being the number one flavor in the world. It contained chocolate ice cream with raw cacao nibs, quinoa ice cream with almond, cinnamon and raisins, and mascarpone, topped with caramelized walnuts. The sladogled gelato was good, but it didn't really knock our socks off, I think we all preferred the cream cake more.
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| Sladogled Gelato |
After we finished we walked back up to the hotel, and I snapped a few nighttime pictures of Bled cattle on the way up, and then headed to bed.
Bled Castle
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