Day 1: On our way to the Alpe Adria Trail!

Hello friends! It feels like we’ve been planning this trip for ages, and now it’s finally here! We’re hiking half of the Alpe Adria Trail, which stretches from Austria, through Slovenia, to northern Italy and the Adriatic Sea. The full trail takes 37 days, but we’re planning to tackle the final 17 days (230 miles).

So far our journey has taken us from Cleveland to Frankfurt, then to Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, by plane. From Ljubljana, we caught a bus to Lake Bled. The entire trip took 19 hours and left us fatigued, but the beautiful summer day in the mountains was too tempting to pass up, so we got out and soaked in some sunshine. Sadly, it will be our last dry, sunny day for a while as the forecast shows some rain and clouds coming in.

Tomorrow, we head north to “Velden am Worthersee”, Austria, where we’ll officially begin the Alpe Adria Trail.

As always, you’ll find our usual pics and captions from the day below. For more pictures, check out today’s gallery at this link: HERE

All bright eyed as we leave CLE. We had to check our hiking poles and multi tool.

The Bled Castle sits on a rock high above the town of Bled. Construction of the castle began in 1009 AD and it’s currently a well kept museum. It was a 30 minute walk from our B&B up to the castle, so naturally we had to go see it!

The views of the very blue Bled Lake were spellbinding! The lake is fed by glaciers which gives it the turquoise color.

A 17th Century Church sits on a small island in the middle of Lake Bled. People can rent a boat to take out to the island - we instead opted to take a 5 mile walk around the lake.

This peacock showed up a lot around the castle and the walk along the lake.

Bob got to practice speaking Slovenian today! We had a refreshing “pivo”.

We had dinner at the highly recommended Old Cellar Restaurant. The food was fantastic. Look Joan, Bob ordered the pork shank and thought of you!

For dessert we enjoyed the town’s specialty, a cream cake called kremna rezina. According to Rick Steves, Slovenes travel from all over the country to try this famous dessert.

A view from our balcony at the Penzion Kaps B&B. It’s a lovely European style inn.

That’s enough blogging for one night. Time to get some rest! Looking forward to sharing tomorrow’s story.

Jen & Bob