Wife in the Fast Lane: LAKE BLED, SLOVENIA

On Easter Sunday, Nick and I took a day trip to Slovenia. The 2.5 hour drive was quick and easy, even though it rained on us most of the drive.

When we arrived to the sleepy town of Bled, we jumped out and strolled around part of the lake with the locals. I'm just guessing that they were locals based on the fact that they were walking their dogs and staring at us. We must look like foreigners; I couldn't tell what gave it away more my hair or Nick's March mustache.

Fortunately, Lake Bled is nothing like its title indicates. It is stunning! It is one of few places Slovenia is known for. Above the lake is a beautiful castle, and on the lake is an island with a church.

I wanted to get a panoramic view of the area first, so we headed up to the castle.

If you can see past Nick's mustache, you might be able to spot the island with the church on it.

After battling tour buses for parking, we finally made it up to the castle.

After waiting 5 minutes for tourists to get out of the way, we finally got a picture of the entrance!

It was a cold and dreary day, but I still loved the view from the castle.

Sleepy town of Bled

Castle Bled (Grad)

I couldn't wait to get down to that island!

You have to take a boat to get to the church on the island. I tried to get a picture of the boat...it's a little hard to see.

Brrr....

I loved all of the turquoise in the stone steps.

I don't think I'd mind living in this castle. :)

After running around the castle and through the museum, we headed back down to the town of Bled to get a quick lunch and try some of the "Original Bled Cream Cake" at Park Hotel.

The cream cake certainly didn't disappoint.

I had to get a picture of the decor in Park Hotel. Purple is Nick's squadron colors, so he really enjoyed it. :)

After lunch, we jumped on a boat and headed out to the island.

Almost all of the other tourists on the boat were Americans. Nick is actually smiling in this photo. It's hard to tell with his mustache. :)

There's a tradition on the island that a groom carry his bride up all 99 steps to the church for good luck....We found out the hard way that there are two flights of stairs on the island....we picked the wrong set of stairs first! Doh!! Here's a picture of Nick before going up the stairs...

This set of stairs only has 78 steps.

78 steps doesn't seem too intimidating. :)

Here's Nick looking slightly fatigued after carrying me up 78 steps, and then finding out we had gone up the wrong flight of stairs.

There's also a funny sign next to him. :)

He still had a smile on his face tho. :)

We found the right flight of stairs!! We found out that the couple on the stairs in this photo were also in the military, but stationed in Germany. What are the odds?

I gave Nick a quick break by taking photos down on the dock.

Getting pumped to carry me up 99 more steps!! Haha!

He did it!! We even got another tourist to capture a photo! :)

We ran inside the church to get warm only to discover that the church was much colder than outside.

But we did get to ring the church bell! You're supposed to make a wish, and then ring the bells three times.

According the the picture, you're not supposed to kick your sister in the face while ringing the bell. :)

Nick's thinking really hard about what to wish.

After ringing the bell and making our wishes we headed back to the boat, and were off to the mainland.

This is the friendliest swan I've ever encountered. I kind of wanted to take him home. :)

We took a quick detour to Lake Bohinj up the road, before leaving for home. There were signs for a 20 minute hike to a waterfall called Slap Saciva.

At the bottom of the 20 minute hike we were getting rained on...

At the top of the hike we were getting snowed on. There was about 4 feet of snow on the ground. At one point I took a step and my foot went into the snow up above my knee!