Beautiful Bled

The train ride to Slovenia turned out to be a combination of train and bus. Due to some track work, I had to switch train-bus-train in the middle of nowhere Hungary. No wonder they didn't allow any seat reservations when I made the booking. The AC wasn't working in both, which made most of the journey uncomfortable. But as we got closer to Ljubljana towards nightfall, the temperature dropped considerably, and I was freezing... There must've been a 15C temperature change during the day!!!
The train was delayed somewhere; it was past 11pm when I got to my hostel and I was dead tired. No dinner, just sleep.

My main reason for coming to Slovenia was to see Lake Bled. But it was drizzly and cold when I got up in the morning, tempting me to stay in bed and forget Bled. I had to force myself to get out...which was a good thing, since the weather started to clear up a bit later on : )
The bus left just as I got to the station (damn it!); the next one was in an hour. I used that hour efficiently – booked my overnight train to Belgrade for the following day and had some MacDonald's apple pie and coffee.

By the time I got to Bled, the sun was coming out. So happy I came because the place is REALLY BEAUTIFUL!!! It was a good change from all the city sights I've been seeing over the past few weeks. I highly recommend it to anyone headed out there.
Basically, there's an emerald green lake with an island church. See how green the water is!I walked around the entire circumference of the lake (6km) with a lunch stop at a supermarket (they make good, cheap sandwiches on demand) at the campground. Took me about 2-3 hours to do the walk.
I didn't take the row boat to the island since I've seen enough churches and the boat ride was too expensive for my standards.

But I did end up going to Bled Castle (I know...I'm supposed to hate castles!). Only because I climbed up the cliff, thinking it was going to be free to get the lake view.
Nothing in this world is free, especially for tourists. You can climb up to the castle, but cannot see anything unless you enter the castle...which of course charges an admission fee. Argh. I made the climb and was NOT going to leave without getting my view. So, I reluctantly paid the 7 Euro : (
Looking back though, I think it was totally worth it. That's all that counts, right?!

I noticed this cute garage on my way back down to the bus stop. Why Pinocchio, I wonder. A house full of liars???

Back at the hostel, I befriended an Australian girl who left her home country to be closer to her BF in London. But she's traveling on her own throughout Europe while he waits for his Aussie working visa...or something like that. Anyways, we went out for some pizza, which is apparently "THE" food to eat in Slovenia. Not dough pizza, but toasted bread pizza. They put a ton of cheesy. Delicious!

BTW, I've never encountered this before, but the hostel I'm staying at had this push-button system shower. I'm used to it on public sinks, but not in the shower!!! You have to push on the thing every 10 seconds to keep the water running. Not to mention that you can't adjust the water temperature either. Very annoying!!!