Lake Bled, a stunning travelling destination that just came out of a fairytale. It is located in Slovenia, not very far from the capital city of Ljubljana. Although it is quite popular amongst some tourists, we believe that it doesn’t get as much attention as it deserves.
Hence, in this Travel Guide, we want to highlight our experiences, showing you all the methods of arriving to Lake Bled. With this blog we aim to make your travels much easier, giving you step-by-step instructions, to help you get a better understanding of the whole situation.
Since this is a special destination, just taking one plane won’t cut it. However, we want to show you that it is rather still simple to arrive, and that at the end of the day, it is completely still worth visiting, even if it means that it involves a little more effort.
The first method of arriving to Lake Bled, is to take a plane directly to Ljubljana. Now this method, won’t work for everyone, especially considering that Ljubljana airport is quite small, and doesn’t have direct flights from many destinations worldwide.
There are currently 19 destinations that allow you to fly directly into Ljubljana Airport such as Paris, Munich and Warsaw (click here to see all connections). When compared to other airports, this is quite few, so it is likely that you need to either take two planes to arrive or else take a train or bus, or even drive there.
In our opinion, this method only works for a small fraction of people, since you have to be extremely lucky to either live in that city or close enough to be able to fly directly into Ljubljana Airport. However, if you manage to find a direct flight, after you will still need to find another mode of transport to take you to Lake Bled. This will be explained in more detail below.
The second approach would be to take several modes of transportation available, and finding the most efficient way of arriving to Lake Bled. Since we left from Malta, and a direct flight wasn’t an option, this was the method that we decided to chose to start one of the best holidays we ever had.
This process is unique for everyone, depending on which city and country you are leaving from, and which modes of transportation you are most comfortable with. Although it can be quite scary and confusing changing from one thing to another, we wanted to share with you our journey to hopefully make yours less stressful and give you a peace of mind.
Moreover, we will also give you a step-by-step guide of how we arrived, any tips and tricks that we found useful and recommendation of applications we used to make our journey happen. We split our itinerary into 3 steps, as you can see below, to make it easier to explain as well as to show you each time we took a new method of transportation.
The most commonly used airports to stop-over when arriving in Ljubljana, are either Venice Treviso or Trieste Airport, which are found both in Italy. Although both of these are still not very big, they offer direct flights from much more destinations around Europe, than Ljubljana Airport, which facilitate this whole process.
In our case, we took a direct flight, early in the morning to Treviso Airport which only costed us around €30 per person with Ryanair. Even though this wasn’t the only option, it was the most ideal for us since it was the cheapest, and it left early, meaning that we had more time to enjoy and relax.
When deciding upon which airport to first go to, we suggest that you begin by doing some research to establish which one is the best for you. For example, at the beginning we thought that Trieste was the only option to do this, however after doing some research we found out that both Treviso and Zagreb airport are much better options when leaving from Malta. This enabled us to be more efficient and ultimately save on both money and time.
The next step would be to take a train or bus to Ljubljana. This is ideal as it allows you to arrive directly in the heart of the city rather than at the airport, which saves you time and money that you would have rather spent on a taxi from the airport to the city centre.
We suggest that for this step you keep an open mind. Our first thought was to take a train since it is known to be faster and more comfortable. However, after doing research, we found out that the bus actually took less time since it was direct without any stops. Moreover, unlike we thought, it was actually a mini-bus with around 10 passengers, which made the journey much more quiet and peaceful and overall, it was spotless.
To find the best bus, we used the app Omio. This is the Skyscanner of trains and buses, showing all the available routes and times from many different companies. We suggest downloading the app as you get a discount for first time users, and keeping an eye out around the holidays, as we managed to get another discount for Valentine’s Day.
Now, this step was probably the easiest and cheapest one we did. It is simply the equivalent process of taking the ‘normal’ bus in your city, and costs the same as any other route, even though it takes you to such a stunning marvel and is around an hour long.
We bought the tickets directly from their website beforehand. Keep in mind that during weekdays, tickets cost around €5.90 per person, while on weekends, tickets only cost €1.90. If you buy it online, as we did, make sure you have the ticket printed out, since you will need to give the driver the physical copy in order to be able to get on the bus.
Ljubljana is quite small, hence, easily walkable. Even though we planned in advance to stay somewhere close to the bus station, it is not necessary as it can be easily reached within a matter of minutes from all over the city. Although you buy the ticket for a specific time-slot, it is valid for one trip during the entire day, no matter what time you go. We suggest that you go at least 20 minutes earlier to be the first one on the bus if you want a good seat, and sit on the right side to experience some of the most incredible views (opposite to the driver).
Both methods of arriving to Lake Bled of course come with their own pros and cons that will vary from one traveller to another. It is important that you evaluate each and keep an open mind before establishing which is the most ideal for you. Remember that choosing one just because it’s the most popular, might cost you more money and waste much more of your time.
If you plan to take planes all the way, remember that you have to be extra careful in case of any delays. Even though this might be the easiest option, as you simply just have to find the gate and wait, it might not be the cheapest at all. Due to the lack of choice, of course flights to Ljubljana are likely to be much more expensive than simply taking the bus to the same destination.
However, if you choose a mix of transportation like we did, this can be a more budget friendly option for you, due to the vast choice that there is. Nevertheless, this choice also comes with its own disadvantages. It would likely require you to walk from the airport in order to find the pick up spot (although likely not very far). Moreover, if people are already on the bus before you, it is a possibility that you won’t find a seat next to the person you’re travelling with, especially if you are more than two.
Each time you travel, take it as an opportunity to learn new tips and tricks that will help you do better on your next adventure. Even though we don’t regret anything that we did or how we did it, there are some things that we could have done better or planned more beforehand, in order to make this journey less stressful overall.
For example, we planned to take the bus from Venice to Ljubljana 2 hours after the plane had landed. The same amount of time we usually plan for connecting flights. However, since there is no security to go through and likely much fewer people, we found out that this waiting time was actually too long, and we would have preferred to spend it in Ljubljana. Of course flights could get delayed hence, we still suggest allowing at least 1 hour as a just-in-case.
Moreover, as I said, you will need to give the physical ticket to the driver before entering the bus. Make sure you keep these very handy constantly, especially if you are travelling only with a backpack and it is full, which makes it even harder to get out, like it was in our case. We also recommend taking out any essential items or things that you might want to use during the journey, since the driver will likely take away any suitcase or backpack, and you won’t have access to them.
Now that we have discussed the best ways of reaching Lake Bled, you can determine which method is best for you. Although the second choice was the ideal option for us, it is not necessarily the best one for you, hence we suggest that you take our tips, do more research and find the most efficient method when it comes to both money and time, depending on where you are leaving from.
Even though it might seem stressful, to do all of this before actually starting to enjoy your holiday, we can guarantee that it was all extremely worth it. Moreover, we would like to emphasise on the fact that it was actually quite simple, and we preferred the bus largely than taking a second plane to arrive to the same destination.
With that in mind, we can now start planning how we will spend our time in both Ljubljana and Bled. Make sure to keep following our page as we will soon share with you all we did during this amazing trip and any tips and tricks that we learnt along the way. Don’t forget to check out some of our recent posts such as Valencia and follow us as we embark on our World Tour Journey through our Journal.
We are Martina and Cyprien, a young couple with a commun passion for travelling.
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