Vintgar Gorge - Slovenia

             On Saturday morning of the 5^th, we decided to part from the lake to visit Vintgar Gorge.  Vintgar Gorge was a scenic walk along the Radovna River.

It was about a 5-10 minute drive (roughly 3.5 km) from Lake Bled and the well-posted signage made it an easy find. Tip: Drive past the restaurant for parking. Some people see the rows of parking and cars lined on the side of the road as a sign that it’s a really packed day and decide to park at the first spot they see and walk from there, however if you drive past the restaurant to the gorge entrance, there is plenty of parking spaces and you don’t have to walk the whole distance.

They did charge an entry fee of 4€ per adult, 3€ for students and 1€ for children, but I suppose it is needed for the upkeep of the boardwalks.

It was a beautiful place to be sure, however a bit more crowded than my liking, and my spoiled self grew up in a beautiful place with many river walks that seemed just as picturesque as Vintgar Gorge, so why this one was a tourist attraction with an entrance fee mystifies me. 

The Wooden Bridges were fun to walk over and cross. I saw some people with strollers, however we opted to use the back pack to carry our little one, and he slept for half of our walk. 

This is a dam, but the path was so close we all got well misted as we walked by. It felt great!

Photo of me, courtesy of my sister!

The walk was pleasant and the water beautiful. I recommend going early to beat the crowds and the heat.

  

Above right is a picture of myself in front of the Šum waterfall, the highest river fall in Slovenia measuring at 26 meters. You will find it at the end of your gorge walk, just before you turn around and return the way you came.

 

We definitely recommend grabbing lunch at the restaurant located just before the Gorge entrance after your long walk. We thought the food to be delicious and well priced. Bonus, they have a playground for kids. Hurray!

The Sunshine Bread was devoured. I suggest getting this warm loaf as an appetizer!

My Husband and I each got different kinds of trout in garlic butter sauce. yum!

I apologize, I don't know what this is. When I asked my sister what it was, she said "Heaven". LOL. It was some sort of cheesy ham dish in sauce... that is as much as I know. That, and it was apparently scrumptious.

If you would like to know more and see beautiful pictures from others, try here: www.bled.si/the-vintgar-gorge

Where to stay when traveling

I would like to preface this post by declaring that I am not a representative of any online company and am not getting paid to advertise for advertise for anyone [though if you sign up we could earn travel credit, so if you wanted to do that give us a shout out first and we'll send you an invite ;) ]. With that out of the way, I would like to recommend to you Airbnb when traveling. We have found housing through their site three times now and it has, so far, been nothing but a success!

If you are a host, you post the place you have for rent, be it a room in or off your house or a separate apartment or even a house! Those who are traveling type in the location they would like to go, and a map pops up with locations in that location and the nearby cities. Each location/host will have lengthy descriptions, pictures, and reviews from other travelers so you can get a feel for the host and their place. The first time we used the site was on our trip to Austria last year, when we rented an apartment that we and our friends shared for five days.

On this journey we rented a studio apartment in Munich and a room in someone’s house in Heidelberg. 

This was the studio apartment that we stayed at in Munich. Complete with a balcony, it was a great fit for us and inexpensive!

 

This method adds a new element of adventure because you are staying somewhere where the locals live. You’re not in a cookie cutter hotel room with the bland walls and common place water colored pictures above the beds. Each location offers you a host of personal experiences that a hotel could not offer you. Furthermore, we find this option to be much cheaper than hotels, and we can also call or email the host to negotiate our arrival and departure times. The décor, furniture, and style of the locations we stay at also offer us a taste of the culture as seen by our host. Even though we browse through pictures before selecting where we will stay, it’s always a different experience than anticipated in person.

 

Heidelberg is a fantastic place! And being a city many hundreds of years old and steeped in history, coupled with a famous university, hiking trails, and castle ruins, it was a very pricey place to stay! Our most cost effective option would be to have a room in someone’s place. I had a slight hesitancy at first, since we previously had only had places entirely to ourselves. But we took the leap and it may be the only option we chose from now on!

The pinkish tinted room above was the one we stayed in at Heidelberg. Again, the decorations may not be something I would do in my own house, but it was fun for the experience! We had our own room and bathroom and balcony, and the entrance was off of their kitchen balcony so if we were to come home late at night we wouldn’t even disturb much of the family as their rooms were off a different hallway.

A fun staircase in our room!

Our host truly adopted us into her family for the day! When we first arrived, just after getting our own set of keys and dropping our bags in the room, she made us tea and we sat in her kitchen and had great conversations as we rested up from our drive there. She told us all we wanted to know about the city, where the best places to park for tourist destinations were, where to eat, and at what times. This is the sort of insider information you can only get from a local!

And small world that it is, she turned out to be an Italian woman who was born and raised less than an hour from where we currently live in Italy. As such, she spoke to our little one just like our Italian family do, and she doted on him like his grandparents.

 She is fluent in Italian, English, German, French, and Spanish. How fantastic is that? What a talent for languages. I am quite jealous and hope to reach fluency in as many languages some day. She has lived all over the world and had traveled much of California. She and her family are moving to France at the end of this year and she said we were welcome to come and visit her. I feel as though we made a friend for life, and at the very least another contact and connection in another country.

The balcony off of our room. We had a great view of the castle!

A closer view. Heidelberg was very quaint. We hope to go back there.

 

And the final picture is of our host lady crawling around with our little one. She loved him! And we fell in love with her and relished the experience to be adopted by her sweet family for our stay in Heidelberg. I highly recommend this method when you travel. You will gain experiences and connections I don’t believe can be found in a hotel.

 

Murano - Island of Glass

Our next stop, after the colorful island of Burano, was Murano, an island known for its glass making.

This is a snapshot from Google maps. Here you can see the bridge from the mainland to Venice which we crossed by train. We then boarded a water bus in Venice which took us to Burano (top right of screen). After Burano we took the water bus to Murano (see center of screen) and eventually back to Venice and the train station. 

       We didn’t stay long in Murano. Although viewing the glass works was beautiful, it was very touristy and expensive and we were exhausted from walking ad shopping around the island of Burano. 

I'm not sure if you can read the tags on the necklaces here, but they are in the high 70's and 80's in Euro. eep! The jewelry was beautiful, however, far out of our price range.  

A large Noah's Ark with many pairs of glass animals

      They were also very particular about pictures, which is why the only ones you see here are ones taken while window shopping and not inside the store.

The centers/squares had glass art. This and the blue picture above are examples of what we saw. 

They seemed to have just about everything you can think of made in glass. 

There were museums and demonstrations of glass making, but we didn't visit those as we were dragging and eager to start the journey home. Murano was a cool place to stop and visit, particularly if glass and art interest you. However beware, it's crazy expensive and touristy, and as with Burano lace, a large amount of the glass likely isn't hand made by local Italians, so be sure to ask before buying it if you're hoping for genuine local craft.