The daily diary of a wandering restaurateur
June 2 - Lake Bled

Today we thought it would be interesting to poke around Lake Bled a bit. We were undecided about how long we want to stay around Bohinj and since we have to go out through Lake Bled anyway to get to Ljubljana and find another camera, we thought we might scope it out and perhaps stay there tomorrow night. The European Summit was over so the roads were open again and the traffic was minimal. It is hard to describe Lake Bled adequately without pictures, although I did post one a few days ago.

We started at Bled Castle, the poster child for what everyone thinks a medieval fort should look like. Perched on a cliff 100 meters above the lake, it has towers, ramparts, a moat . . . and a staggering view of the lake below. The castle dates from the 11^th century although most of what is there now is from the 16^th century. The museum traces the history of the region from the Bronze Age to the mid 1800s. There is also two restaurants in the castle, one on the main castle terrace and another on a lower level.

We headed back town the hill and Margene found a crafts fair of sorts in a park next to the lake. She has a nose for these things . . . and a weakness for handmade lace. While she picked out a few pieces to add to her collection, I scouted out a spot for lunch. Today it was an outdoor restaurant on the water a hundred yards or so from the crafts booths. I needed a break from the heavy meat diet and had some excellent tortellini. Margene went for mushrooms with Gorgonzola cheese. Add some crusty bread and a cold beer . . . on a warm sunny day by the lake . . . and life is truly good!

The only drawback to our present lodgings is the lack of a telephone which means I can't connect the laptop to the Internet and upload these pages, but it is relatively easy to find spots with Internet terminals so we can at least check e-mail. I figure that it is the weekend and all of you are probably out playing anyway, so by the time you get rolling on Monday, I hope to have these last couple of days posted. At any rate, we did a quick e-mail check and headed back down the valley to Lake Bohinj, about 18 miles away.

After a short afternoon nap, we took a boat cruise to the other end of the lake and back, about an hour round trip. The pace was relaxed, the scenery spectacular and the water was calm. Better yet, the weekend crowds had all gone home, so we almost had the boat to ourselves. We tried another country inn for dinner and had another good experience. My only complaint is that there doesn't seem to be much variety in the menus and the prices are comparable in most of the places we have been. With no clear point of difference, location is the main reason to choose one spot over another. The only places that clearly stand out are the pizza joints and the Chinese restaurants.

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