Slovenia

We took 5 days off work to spend some time in Slovenia and we discovered another gem just 2 hours from our house.  Since my European geography wasn't too hot when I moved here, I've included a map.  We live in the northeastern part of Italy.  Slovenia is directly east and later in this blog you'll see photos from Croatia, which is south of Slovenia.

Lake Bled has it all: mountains, a castle, an island with a huge church in the middle of the lake, hiking, climbing, and clear water.

View from the castle

Cassy bottles her own wine.  She was assisted by a friendly sweating monk.  When I asked if they take credit cards he replied, "Yes, of course.  I am a modern monk."  He found out we were from California and told us to "Say hi to Arnold when we see him."

Italian-style "personal" pizzas.  They are brought to the table uncut and are eaten with a knife and fork.  For those of you who know of "The Prospector" restaurant in Twain Harte, the dude knows how to make Italian pizza, even if he is pretty eccentric.

You can take a trip to the island in the middle of Lake Bled in one of these boats.

Jess surveys the clear water between swims in the lake.

We stayed in the town of Kranjska Gora.  It's a ski town in the winter and an outdoor paradise in the summer.  

It seems like every field in Slovenia has one of these structures, which are used to dry hay.

A hike brought us to this amazing meadow just below the summit.

This photo would be a lot cooler if I actually knew these people.  This qualifies as borderline stalker behavior, but I just HAD to snap this shot.

Cassy stole my camera for this shot.  Nice work.

Summit photo.  We don't look tired, but we are.  We had both done long training runs that morning and then we hiked a couple more painful uphill miles to get to this summit, but it was worth every bit of effort.

This little pizza joint served us what we know to be the best pizza in Europe.  They make 250-300 pizzas per day in that tiny little wood burning oven.  We liked it so much that we ate dinner there 2 nights in a row.