OK, so I have made no secret that I like ice cream for dessert, a treat to finish the day.

Note: This is the twelfth post in this series. Go HERE to start from the beginning.

At breakfast, Valerie found this sign and thought of me. I couldn’t disagree! 😉 (Thanks, Ellen, for taking the picture!)

We had planned to do a morning gathering at 10 AM because it’s still raining. With clearing predicted later, we postponed the morning meetup until 11. It wouldn’t be so fun walking outside in the continuous rain.

This was a precious sharing time, and I got to give my gift to the group. I introduced how I’d found this poem (in Parker Palmer’s “Healing the Heart of Democracy”) by a 13th century poet named Hafiz. Then I asked everyone to hold hands (we were in a circle) and I recited the poem entitled “A Great Need”:

Out of a great need
We are all holding hands
And climbing.
Not loving is a letting go.
Listen,
The terrain around here
Is far to
Dangerous
For that.

Then I passed around the buttons I’d made with this on it for everyone to have. 🙂

About noon, we were ready to head out to our activity for the day, Lake Bled. The rain had mostly stopped; we even saw a patch or two of blue sky. Conditions looked favorable.

Our first stop was the castle on the top of the high cliff. I’ve seen pictures of this castle but didn’t know where it was, and didn’t realize we’d be visiting it on this trip. What a treat!

There was a sculling competition going on on the lake, so they were taking over much of it. And probably some of what we saw along the shore was due to that, too. But more on that a bit later.

The views from the castle were lovely. The weather had cleared even more by this time, and I got some shots of the shoreline and island some of us would visit later. There’s a walking path that goes around the whole lake. It’s apparently about 3.5 miles and a few of our group took that walk. It goes through some forested areas with no buildings–a real back-to-nature experience. The last picture shows a sort of festival area, with booths of craft sellers and stalls for food. I’m not sure if this is a regular thing or if it was there for the sculling competition. Kind of think it might be a regular thing. And in the same area there are shops, some along the shoreline and some a block or so inland. I wasn’t interested in shopping didn’t plan to visit the stores.

There wasn’t really a whole lot to see of inside rooms in the castle. An unlabeled door close to the gift shop turned out to be a chapel. Not large, but the walls were ornate. I liked the statue, too. Then there was the courtyard. The circular steps go down to the “WC” (water closet, AKA toilets). Pretty fancy, huh?

Before leaving the castle, I visited the print shop. This was really cool. There were bookmarks, magnets, leather pouches and bottle holders, and other souvenirs. But the star of the shop was a Gutenberg-style print press. You could choose from 6 or 7 designs of what to print, choose hand-made paper, and decide what text you wanted on the paper.

The printer chose the type, placed it in the form, put that in the press, and inked it. Then he put the paper in and pulled the lever that drops the weight on the form. Once that’s released, the paper is removed and voila! You have your printed paper. A little melted wax, a stamp, and the product is complete. Very cool.

Since I was getting two papers, he let me pull the lever and stamp the wax. Wouldn’t want to do this for a living, but it was great to see and participate in a process I’d only read about in books.

That experience was a highlight for me, a nice good-bye to the castle. 😉

Once we came down from there, we were dropped off close to where we could catch a boat to go visit the island. Since 10 of us also wanted to do that, it made for a good group.

Minka told us that originally, the boatmen were all poorer families who couldn’t afford to pay their taxes. They instead were allowed to work them off by providing rides to the church on the island for services. Since then, the rights to be a boatman have been inherited, and the folks working now are descendants of those original boatmen.

We arrived just as one boat was half full. They seat 20 people and only had 10, so we filled up the boat and we were off. The boatmen row to and from the island. Our guy was very nice. Spoke good English, too, and was able to answer people’s questions.

Once we got to the island, we had 45 minutes to look around, then we’d catch the same boat back to our starting place. In the fist picture, see the castle on the hill where we’d just been?

On the island, up a long set of steps (“steps at your own risk”) is the church. There’s a fee for getting in, which also includes being able to go up in the bell tower. Valerie and I went in. Right in front of the altar is a rope, and pulling on that rings a bell. Valerie did it with no problem. When I tried, she had to come help me get it started. We couldn’t see the bell so didn’t quite know where it was in its swing, or at least that’s what I’m telling myself. It’s not easy!

From here, we went to the bell tower. This was cool. Lots of steps, but doable. At each turn are signs with some fact about clocks, towers, or just inspirational sayings. The pendulum clock hangs down in the middle of the staircase.

Coming down from the tower, we still had some time, so looked around and saw a gift shop and small restaurant (hesitate to call it a snack bar because it felt nicer than that). We went inside, then I went outside to order an ice cream. I sat on the steps for a bit eating it, then started moseying back to the top of the stairs, catching a couple of pictures on the way. The statue is of Mary Magdalene, and that’s the bell tower.

As I was sitting on a bench at the top of the stairs finishing my ice cream, Valerie came by and headed back to the boat ’cause our time was getting short. I followed after the last, delicious bite. 🙂

At the boat, the fee was collected as we boarded. Smart. Get you to the island and then you have to pay to get back!

Once we were back to our starting place, people mostly scattered to either walk portions of the lake, shop, or get something to eat. I was hungry and Sally let me share some french fries. We didn’t want to eat too much because dinner would be in a couple of hours, but, well, we’d been hungry for a while and this seemed like a good snack to tide us over. It was perfect.

There was time to stroll a bit, and we ran into booths where local crafts people were selling all kinds of things. A little browsing here, but I wasn’t tempted to buy anything. Some folks who’d been doing other things came by, too. We eventually all met up at our drop-off/pick-up place, and then we were on the road to dinner.

Dinner was at a lovely restaurant where they serve authentic Slovenian food. They had apparently opened just for us. While welcoming, our waiter seemed to be a bit dour, going about his business well but not showing a lot of personality. Jen won him over though, and eventually he was telling us jokes about experiences he’d had as a waiter. Everyone was laughing, Minka pretty much losing it in laughter. Doesn’t he have a great smile?

Once we got back from dinner, we had another sharing, this time to tell what we’d observed of the person whose name we’d drawn out of bag in Celje. I think everyone was moved. Lovely moments I think many, or all, of us will treasure.

Only one full day left in Solvenia. Tomorrow we’re headed back to Ljubljana. We’re leaving at 8:30 and it’s almost 2 AM, so I’m off to get things together.