From the Eos/N95/Eee of Simon: Friday 3rd July

Friday sees us heading to a large lake in Slovenia called Lake Bled
(pronouned "Bleyd" sort of...). This is a beautiful Lake setting which
used to be the setting of various summer housess for royalty throughout
Europe, including the omnipresent Habsburgs.

There is an island in the middle of the lake, which we decide we will
probably visit later in the day. You can either pay someone to take you
out there in their boat, or for less money, row out there yourself.
Being the wily ones that we are, we decide to walk around to the other
side of the lake, where there is a shorter distance between the shore
and the island, so more time spent exploring the little island, less
time rowing! More on that later.

The first step was to climb the surrounding mountainous terrain, up to
the obligatory castle at the top (see pictures below). After the climb
we came back down, grabbed some lunch, then started heading around the
lake to find the shortest possible distance between shoreline and island.

As we ambulated along, we noticed the gathering clouds, which was a
slightly worrying sight. However with my usual "she'll be right"
attitude winning out again, we exchanged 10 Euros for 1 hour of fun with
a row-boat.

The trouble started about 5 minutes in, and by trouble, I mean rain. I
was rowing as quickly as I could, and Celina was encouraging me to row
as quickly as I could, and also struggling to get an umbrella up. We
reached the island and managed to chain up the boat in what I guessed
was a secure manner, and then dashed inside the church that is located
on the island, where the rain really started to hammer down.

This church has a bell that is ring-able (?) by people, and supposedly
if you make a wish and ring it three times, your wish will come true.
Celina thought about her wish very thoroughly before giving the bell a
ring. I wished that it would stop raining.

We had a bit more of a look around the island, which pretty much
consisted of a souvenir shop unfortunately. There were a bunch of poms
who had been a bit heroic and swam out to the island, who were now
debating what their options were for getting back. I don't know what
they were worried about, getting wet???

As it turned out the bell must have worked, because the rain did
eventually take a break, and not a moment too soon. With 15 minutes to
go on our boat-hire window, we rushed back to the dock and hit the oars
(I hit the oars, Celina took up motivational duties again). But of
course we were not going to escape that easily, and yep, the rain
started again about 5 minutes from shore. It was more of a gentle shower
this time around though so was not as unpleasant as the first time, and
I managed to land the boat quite well, with 5 minutes up our sleeve.

After returning the boat, we had a quick look around the market that was
going on, but found nothing of interest. I purchased my usual souvenir
(a cow bell in this case), after which we called it quits and headed
back home. We ate at the place we had eaten on our first night in
Ljubljana, and I got another massive pizza, which I quite successfully
polished off nicely. Tomorrow is our next country - Croatia!

5791 - that looks like a postcard to me, but then again, I took the picture