I left the hostel a little after 9 to get the bus to Bled. Everyone else had got there a few minutes before I did and were immediately whisked onto a departing bus that was different from the one we'd intended to take - as such, I had to take the intended bus separately. It was ok though, the ride was only about an hour and it gave me a chance to update the blog. Once there, we reunited. There were 6 of us, and it was all the people from the previous night that I liked the most. Nobody had been bad, but there were a few people I was perfectly ok to be missing the company of.

Bled is clearly a tourist hotspot, and with obvious reason - it's beautiful. The town is built on a large lake with crystal blue water (reminiscent of some from New Zealand) and there's a road that runs around it. Above the north side of the lake is a giant sheer cliff with a castle on top of it. In the middle of the lake is a tiny island with a very cute little church in the middle. Mountains surround on all sides. We set out to walk the perimeter of the lake and see what it had to offer.

There wasn't anything incredibly interesting to do around lake, but the quality of the scenery more than made up for that. At one point we had the idea to go swimming and set out to find an appropriate spot. When we eventually found one, the water was very cold and we couldn't stay in too long, but it was a really great experience. I hadn't brought a change of clothes of course, so I ended up having soaked underwear for the rest of the afternoon. We walked up to the castle on the cliff and were disappointed to see that they wanted almost €20 for entry, since none of us wanted to pay that. We turned around and left Bled after having been there for maybe 5 hours. On the way back, some French speaking high schoolers were doing this bizarre arm dancing thing that vaguely resembles something I've seen called "tutting", but I'm not sure what they were going for. They kept it up the entire drive though, so it must have been important.

I made dinner once we got back and then went out again in the evening to play since drinking games in the park. We bar hopped for a few hours after that and had a very large group going. I've started to find that I value the smaller groups more - it's really impossible to socialize the way I like in a group of 15. A year or two ago I might not have felt that way, but more and more massive groups just tend to be overwhelming and difficult to manage. I finally went to bed around 2:30 with the intention of getting up relatively early the following morning to see the national museum before heading to Austria.