After an amazing time in Croatia, we were very excited to take a train across the border into Slovenia! Another first time country for the both of us.

We took the bus to the train station in Zagreb and enjoyed walking around a bit there. Then hopped on the train for the few hour ride into Ljubljana. (Pronounced LOO-BLEE-AH-NA) The train ride was so beautiful! It was fun just watching the scenery go by. After arriving at the train station, it was about a 20 minute walk to the main square of the city, and our hotel was right in the middle of it, which was super cool. This was the nicest place we stayed at (even though the TV in our room didnt work, we didn't need it, it is just nice to have background noise).

After dropping off our stuff, we met and Ivance and she led us on a short little city tour. We then branched off and walked up to where the castle was located, grabbed some snacks, and continued wandering around the city. This was such a beautiful, quaint little town. With restaurants on the water, cobblestone streets, cute little shops, and a freaking castle right on the hill. The buildings were colorful and unique, and pretty much what you picture when you think of a little European town. A cool thing about Ljubljana is their dragons. In Ljubljana lore, dragons protect the city and the shops are full of cool dragon merch and they even have a dragon bridge.

After walking around for a while, we went back to the hotel to clean up and meet the group for dinner. This was yet another awesome restaurant and great meal. The dessert was also out of this world. Be sure to check out the pics in the album "Ljubljana and Lake Bled Slovenia."

Now onto the next day. This was not a planned part of our itinerary, it was just a free day in Ljubljana, but we all decided to take the one hour bus ride to Lake Bled as it was a highly recomended plae to see while in Slovenia.

Stu, Faisel, Ivance, and me and Jaime all took the same bus and arrived in Lake Bled together. The other girls in our group came a bit later. But the four of us (minus Ivance) rented bikes to bike around the lake together. It was so fun! And so freaking beautiful and scenic! We stopped like every couple of minutes to take photos because the lake was so picturesque. The famous thing there was this church on an island, so we took a boat (with a guide who oared us out there) over to the island as well. The mountains you see in the background are the Julian Alps. The snow-capped mountains against the gorgeous lake made for an unbelievably gorgeous day.

After our trip around the full lake, we met Ivance and the Kristen and Charlotte from our group for lunch and Ivance took us to eat the famous Bled Cream Cake, and it was delicious. After that, Jaime and I took our bikes for another little short ride around part of the lake for a few more photos and then we caught the bus back to Ljubljana.

There, all of us (except Emma from our group, poor thing she was still feeling sick) met up for dinner. It was a busy day in town and most of the restaurants by us were busy and not taking customers, so we found this burger place that could seat all of us and we ended up having an amazing meal for our last night in Ljubljana. The onion rings stood out as especially delicious.

The next day, which was Friday, we headed over across the border to Venice, Italy for our last day of the trip. More on that in my next entry. Be sure to check out the photos in this album: "Ljubljana and Lake Bled Slovenia" as both Ljubljana and the lake were SO SO beautiful. We weren't quite sure what to expect in Slovenia, but everything we saw completely blew us away. We are so happy we got experience this beautiful country.