Julian Alps, Slovenia / Italy
We did not have much time here but I am glad that we made the effort to visit this beautiful area. I can't help but wonder if beautiful areas like this are popular for European destination weddings. We drove from Croatia to the less popular side of the mountains in Bovec. We thought it would be nice to see the mountains from the other side. At first, I understood why Bovec was not as popular. We stayed at a cute hotel - Hotel Dobra Vila - and had a nice local dinner at Martinov Hram but other than that, not much going on. The locals meals were great but very cheesy! I think I've gained 20lbs on this trip simply because I love to eat local but local food in general, is not healthy. The alpine area is known for their sheep cheese. I'll go into more detail about the food below with photos. The drive from Bovec to Bohinj going through Tarvisio, Italy was amazing, albeit windy. We had pizza and gelato in Italy, of course!, on our way and tried to resist 'pulling over' at ever turn to take a photo. (note: there were very few places to actually pull over on the road) After getting lost, we found our way to the cable cars that took us up all the way to Vogel ski center. It just about gave me a heart attack though, it's pretty freaky that these cable cars can take you all the way to the top of a mountain. We took a lot of photos in the snow to anyone it would have been impressive and even more so to us as Texans. We were surprised that it wasn't as cold as we had expected, there is very little wind up there. We hiked up to Savica waterfall and called it a day back to Hotel Grand Toplice. The hotel had a great view of Bled island so we watched the sunset over drinks from there. We ate dinner at the Ostarija Peglez'n, which was delicious. Before heading out of Bled and on to Ljubljana and back to Budapest we had to grab a slice of cream cake from Slaščičarna Šmon, which Bled is apparently very known for. It did not disappoint. I also love that they are big tea drinkers in Europe and even better, Slovenia is very big on honey. Many people make it home. We ended up purchasing flavored honeys from a store in Ljubljana, the cinnamon vanilla is like crack. After lunch at Bistro Zvezda we made the long, very boring, rainy 4.5 hour drive to Budapest. By 'we' I really mean Ben, I do not know how to drive manual. (He tried to teach me in Iceland, fail) Now here we are... back to what feels like our temporary home.~Caroline
Our meal from Ostarija Peglez'n, we only ended up here after the restaurant we wanted to go to was closed on a Saturday night (?). None the less, we are happy we did. I had a sole fish, a kind I've never had before but it is fairly local to the area so they knew what they were doing. They called the dessert a 'cake' but it was definitely more of a pie + cake combination with raspberries. Probably one of my favorite meals from the trip.
This was our complete meal from Martinov Hram. This was our first meal in Slovenia so we went all out and all local. Ben ordered a lamb stew with lamb roast, safe. I ordered a traditional Bovec soup and a Bovec 'frika'. I had no idea what either of the two were when ordering. The soup was a sheep cheese soup, I love cheese, but that was too much for me. The frika is hard to describe but essentially imagine potatoes, more cheese, bacon, and egg to glue it together, mashed then grilled on both sides. The dessert was like a ravioli with pear and sugar inside.
If you go to Italy there are two things you must eat, pizza & gelato. Despite our to-go pizza not being cut for us, we managed. (Although I still think the gelato we had in Budapest was better).
We drove through Ljubljana to stop and have lunch at Bistro Zvezda. Two soups and what they called "crunchies" on the right, like pizza but on something more like a cracker, delicious ingredients and so nice to have something on the lighter side.
Apparently Bled is known for their cream cake, so we absolutely had to get some. This is from Slaščičarna Šmon, it lived up to the reputation.