Slovenia

The natural landscape here is indistinguishable from Austria - beautiful alpine scenery. The human landscape is fairly similar, but with the occasional big communist bloc apartment building, as we saw in Jesenice - our first stop. New construction is much more appropriate to the rising Euro star that is Slovenia. After an hour (at a pub) in Jesenice, we took a short train to our destination of Bled.

Bled names the town, the lake, the island in the lake, and the medieval castle. The train station deposits you on a hillside high above the east side of the lake. The town is on the opposite corner. About 1 minute into our walk (2 km) to town, we knew that 1 day would not be enough here - it is absolutely beautiful.

We managed a hotel room overlooking the lake (thank you economic slowdown) and will have a great view of Friday night's fireworks display. Our second night corresponds to "Bled Days" - the local festival (dumb luck)

So I'm enjoying a view of the castle light up at night and a Slovene band playing traditional music in a courtyard below. Pretty nice.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]