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Church of the Mother of God on Lake Bled |
In the morning I walked around the lake
with Sharon. The clouds were thick when we started and it felt like we were
walking in a rain forest with a light mist coming down. But it was a refreshing
1 1/2 hour walk. The walk gives some unique perspectives on the island and we
walked right underneath what was one of Tito's palaces now an hotel. Our hotel
was the Hotel Lovec a little above the lake. We had a nice suite and a number
of others have a balcony looking over the lake. The hotel's restaurant is also
supposed to be good, but we didn't try it.
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Prejama Castle |
Then we headed off to Postojna in the
Karst (or limestone) region of Slovenia. This area is know for it's
disappearing lake. The lake is larger than Bohinj lake in the springtime, but
it disappears by this time of year. The phenomenon was originally thought to be witchcraft,
but we now know that there is a huge underground lake in the limestone, but
when there is too much water it overflows above ground. We first visited
Prejama Castle, a unique castle since it is built into a cave. The original
castle was built in the 12th century, but it became famous in the 15th century as the hiding place for
Slovenia's version of Robin Hood, known as Erasmus. He would rob from the
Hapsburg nobility and give to the poor. The Hapburgs eventually sent an army up
to capture him from Trieste. They surrounded the castle for over a year, but
they were unable to catch Erasmus. He used one of the natural caverns of the
cave to leave each night and return with fresh supplies. They bribed one of his
servants to light a candle when he was using the toilet in the most exposed
part of the castle and fired a catapult to knock out the toilet with him inside
of it.
The original castle now has a newer castle in front of it built as a
hunter's lodge. Being in a cave, the castle is always cool and quite damp,
unsuitable for living in permanently. Inside they had carved channels in the
cave rock to channel the water into a cistern. At the top of the cavern a
system of metals pipes was used to collect the dripping water and channel it to
a well up above. Quite ingenious!
After a quick lunch we went to Postojna cave
- boy was it crowded! We were supposed to follow the tour guide in English, but
because of the large crowd and the difficulty of the sloping paths (we went up
and down several times through the two major levels of the cave) we soon lost
the guide. We did have our audio headsets, however, so we could hear about the
highlights of the cave through that. The tour started with a ride behind on rails to get to the interior of the cave. This had to be the insight for the start of Walt Disney's Thunder Mountain
Roller Coaster. While we didn't go up and down, we did have several sharp
curves as we passed by stalactites and stalagmites. The cave is best know for
several formations: a lot of spaghetti (very thin) stalactities hanging from the
ceiling, the many colorful curtain style formations and at the end a red column
followed by what looked like a white ice cream cone. It was another interesting
day.
Our farewell dinner was in the village of Radovljica. We had several surprises during the evening. We had a visit to St. Peter's church in the village, a 15th Century church with it's interior restored to that age. The priest had married Petra and her husband and came back from visiting with first communion families to show us his church. We had been traveling with Irwin Reese, who just retired from the Metropolitan Opera Company. People had been begging him to sing, so he used the acoustics of this church for his performance. Next, we had the opportunity to see Ginger Bread ornaments being made from honey dough before settling down to our excellent Slovenia dinner at Gostilna Lectar.
So how would we summarize this trip? We really liked our guide, Petra, not only was she informative, she shared her life story with us throughout the trip. We also really liked our small ship, only 50 people, with a great staff. It really is nice when you can share your experience with a small group. We probably saw more medieval fortifications than in any other trip. We expected the highlight of the trip to be Dubrovnik, and it was great especially the opportunity to see it at night. But we were pleasantly surprised by Diocletian's Palace in Split, and were blown away by the natural sights in Plitvicka Jerzera National Park and all of Slovenia. Now you've read all about it, if you want to see more pictures and video, there is a 27 minute video available on youtube.
