Emerald River Adventure in Bled

Elena on the hill overlooking Lake Bled
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Our next (and last) stop in Slovenia was Bled, a scenic town in the Julian Alps.

Our hostel in Ljubljana offered an 'express bus' service straight to Bled, so we thought we'd get that. It was pretty funny though, when a Ford Focus hatchback pulled up and 4 people and their backpacks had to squeeze inside! Luckily it was only a 45 minute trip. Express 'bus' indeed!

Ford Focus hatchback? Express 'bus' indeed!

Bled is most famous for it's lake, which is bright blue-green in colour, and has a small island with a church built on it in the middle. On the afternoon we arrived, we first visited Bled Castle, which is perched on top of a mountain overlooking the lake. Then we walked down to the lake and hired a row boat, which we (well, mostly Richard) paddled out to the island, where we had a quick look at the church.

Richard rowing the boat to the island in Bled Lake
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On our next day, due to the limited time we had in Bled (and the fact that there was so much to see), we decided to take an 'Emerald River Adventure' tour around the Bled region with a company called 3Glav. I highly recommend it for anyone visiting Bled! The tour picked us up at 8am, and first took us and a group of other people (2 Aussies, 2 Americans, a South African and a Spaniard) to Jasna Lake, which had great views of the mountains. Next, we drove up to the top of Vrsic, the highest mountain pass in Slovenia, and did a bit of hiking at the top. We continued on to the river Soca, which is the source of all the blue-green water in Slovenia. Little did I know that this part of the tour would involve an extremely scary hike to the Soca spring, including scaling a cliff with nothing to hold onto but a bit of wire. Not the best thing to do while wearing Converse All Stars, which don't have the best grip!

Jasna Lake
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After this we stopped off for lunch and then continued on to Bovec, where Richard participated in white water rafting. I on the other hand, did not... those who know me will also know I am not very adventurous! Anyway, Richard had a great time during his one hour of rafting down the Soca river, including jumping off an 8 metre rock in the middle of the river. Next stop was the Boka waterfall, which was absolutely spectacular. Some people went for a swim, but the water was so so cold, just standing in it made your feet hurt. I don't know how they did it. After this we drove to a bridge nearby, which a couple of the guys on the tour jumped off - Richard included! It was 12 metres tall and there was even a diving board on the bridge. Believe it or not, the bridge is used for training by professional divers. There was some sort of event on a few days after we were there, and 2 Australian divers were participating.

At the top of Vrsic mountain
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By this stage we were all pretty tired, but continued on to the train station, where our guide Petra drove the car onto a car-train and we took a 40 minute ride through the mountains, including a 10 minute long tunnel. The final stop of the day was scenic Lake Bohinj where we took some final photos. 3Glav burnt us each a free CD of photos they had taken throughout the day. It was such good fun and we got to see so many things we wouldn't have, if we didn't do the tour. We met some really nice people and once the day ended at 8:30pm we all went out to dinner back in Bled.