Part Four – Bled: Days 11 – 12

When we left Ukanc, we were happy that we'd finally been able to pay for the apartment but also sad to be leaving such a beautiful and relaxing little place. I was surprised how bereft I felt, especially given how much angst I'd felt at first from the isolation of the place. It's a great little town though, even if it is in the middle of nowhere.

The bus ride to Bled took about 30 minutes. It would have been shorter and we could have avoided trekking around with our packs had I realised the bus stopped in front of our Pension. By the time I realized, it was too late and we had to get off at Bled's bus station.

Lake Bled is a beautiful lake with a picturesque island in the middle. It's a classic Slovenian postcard/tourism image, usually with a couple of graceful swans gliding across the water. Bled is also a bit over-developed and over-touristed. The downside of Bled in the winter is you can't take the boat ride out to the island and you can't swim in the lake. The upside is that it's not quite as busy, although it was fairly busy when we were there because the Biathlon World Championships were going on not far from Bled. (You know, that mad sport that combines cross-country skiing with air rifle shooting.)

After dropping off our rucksacks in the pension, we walked back around the lake and up to Bled Castle. Lonely Planet had reliably informed us that there were 3 ways to get up to the castle. We chose one of the forest paths and it was a bit treacherous in places. We had to pay about five euro to get into the castle and, again, no guided tours in the off-season. As Patrick later observed, you're really just paying for the view.




We walked down from the castle using the nice, safe paved road and stopped in a café for a coffee before dinner. We scheduled another alone day for Sunday, with Patrick taking a ski lesson at the local ski area. I wasn't sure what I was going to do, but then decided a trip to a sauna/spa mightn't be a bad idea. After dinner, we did a little bit of reconnaissance and I settled on Wellness Ziva, even though it was a bit more expensive than the other choices. It had an enormous swimming pool complex with a water slide plus the spa/sauna area.

In the morning, it was a grey, dark day. It looked like it was snowing buckets even though the hotel desk clerk assured us it was just a strong wind blowing around snow that had fallen earlier in the week. Outside, the wind was pretty fierce and I was concerned that Patrick might have a miserable day of skiing ahead of him. The snowing/blowing ended up clearing off right around the time Patrick had his lesson.

Wellness Ziva was a calm, warm oasis in the blustery day. I paid for an entire day of swimming pool + sauna and was given a towel, a bed sheet, and a wristband with a microchip. I asked if there were any rules I needed to be aware of and was told no clothes in the sauna. Of course.

The wristband was interesting. The entrances to the pool and the sauna had turnstiles with a chip reader. You'd hold the chip up to the reader and then would be admitted if your chip granted access to the area. You could also use the chip to lock and then unlock a locker to store your belongings. Very high-tech.

The facilities were all new and sleek. The locker room was huge, spacious, and co-ed. There were small changing rooms you could use but most people seemed not to. The showers were a wide-open area with a glass wall, so everyone in the locker room could see into the showers. (Yep, some people still showered naked – and this was in the general swimming area, not the naked-naked spa.) There were even parts of the locker room that you could see into from the swimming pool. This all just struck me as very strange.

I swam for about an hour and then headed over to do some relaxing in the spa. This place was a million miles away from Klub Zlati in just about every respect. The clientele were younger and less naked (hooray for bed sheets). The standard for walking around seemed to be wrapped in the bed sheet. Even in the sauna and the steam rooms, there was a lot less nudity.

The facilities were top-of-the-line, brand-spanking new, and high-tech. They had fancy names like calderarium and laconium. They also had handy little signs in English that explained how to get the most out of them. I started with the laconium, which was a large comfy tiled couch with a tiled footrest in front of it. The sign said that it would slowly heat you to about 45 degrees Celsius and was ideal for those who found traditional steam rooms too hot. It also said you wouldn't feel it for at least 20 minutes and that you needed an hour to realise the full benefit. It was exactly as advertised.

I spent the next couple of hours trying out the various facilities. I especially enjoyed sitting outside in the hot pool, soaking in the gorgeous views of Lake Bled and the castle. When I got bored of the spa-ing, I went and enjoyed the swimming. I had a bowl of soup in the swimming pool's restaurant and then went back to the spa.

I enjoyed my relaxing day at the spa and was well on my way to being late to meet Patrick. Our plan was to meet at this café for a drink before dinner. When the room key wasn't at the desk, I knew he was in our room. I was just about to knock on the door when he pulled it open, on his way to the café. We had dinner at a very Slovenian restaurant, a fitting end to our travels in Slovenia. On our way back to the hotel, we left Nana in Lake Bled, again using the snowball delivery method. I think she would have found that amusing and practical.