Woke up early this morning and have 4 hours until my bus leaves, so I guess it’s time I sat down at the hostel shared computer and wrote about Lake Bohinj. (Excuse any crazy typos, it’s a croatian keyboard…)

My second day in Bled started with a lazy morning in the hostel, drinking nescafe (it was free, don’t judge me) and chatting and playing Jenga with an Irish guy and an aussie girl who had never played Jenga before and a dutch couple who insisted the rules were you could only use one hand in a turn, you couldn’t alternate right and left to ease a block out. There was talk of hiring bikes and going to some waterfalls, once everyone had gotten up and dressed and we’d found out where these waterfalls actually were.

Around eleven we’d worked out the plan — it turns out the ‘waterfalls’ were actually Vintgar Gorge, which I’d been to the day before, and liked, but not enough to go there a second time. So with that we went our separate ways, the group off to Vintgar and me down to the bus station to see where I could get to easily in the area.

As it happens, there was a bus fairly soon to Lake Bohinj, which was about half an hour away. I’d heard of it before as ‘the other lake in Slovenia; some people say it’s nicer than Bled’. Time to test that theory then.

‘Some people’ are right.

Perfect mountain lake.

Where Bled is quite built up, with its resorts and a substantial town on its shores, Bohinj is more of a large mountain lake that you could imagine hiking to and camping by. It was an overcast day when I was there, and everything was in shades of grey and green and blue, save the odd bright orange canoe and a white streak of a reflected church tower. Though it was hardly deserted, none of the crowds of Bled were there, and none of the bars and the boat hires every few hundred metres along the shore. Just mountains, trees, and a lot of water.

Little beach with a tree.

I guess the reason Bled is more popular is that its water is much warmer – I took a quick dip in Bohinj before lunch, and a quick dip was plenty for me. It’s definitely more of a lake to walk around, or paddle on. I walked all the way around, with frequent stops to admire the views.

Dramatic clouds and still lake.

So yes, count me as one of the ‘some people’ who prefer Bohinj to Bled.