One last morning in Lake Bled. We walked down the street to the Park Hotel, to get our very own lesson in Cream Cake making.
The hotel (and the town as a whole) makes a big deal about how novel the "Bled Cream Cake" is...despite the fact that we have the exact same thing in Budapest called a 'kremes'. But I was very much excited to learn how to make them. And we all were excited to taste them!
We were informed that the kitchen manager, who speaks English and normally runs the tours, was not in, so another person who only spoke Slovene took us down to the basement where the kitchens are. There was a really nice Slovenian woman and her teenage daughter also on the tour who spoke fantastic English and acted as our translators. There was also an Italian man who spoke English and his elderly mother who only spoke Italian. She was cute as could be.
Suit up!
First up? Creating the bottom crust:
I think the kitchen staff were really generous in letting the kids do things...perhaps because the manager wasn't there?? The cook let both kids use the foot pedals on the roller, which takes the butter based pastry dough and gradually gets it to the correct thickness.
After the crusts are baked and cooled, they're stacked and await the next step...
One batch of egg custard is cooked, then divided into several bowls. Then stiffly whipped egg whites are added. They have to be whisked in.
It's not easy!
We all tried it, but the kitchen staff put us all to shame. They have arms of steel.
Next the custard is poured over the pastry crust (with a rectangular mold pressed into the top to contain it).
The top is smoothed out and the custard cools for several hours. Tom's was very smooth. :)
It's then topped with sweetened whipped cream:
Another crust goes on top, and the whole thing is trimmed and cut into 35 pieces. Notice the pile of scraps at the end of the line.
We could eat as many scraps as we wanted! Creamy, custardy, crusty deliciousness.
This woman couldn't have been nicer. She spoke only a bit of English, but it didn't even matter. She loved the kids, and even made them ice cream sundaes. For breakfast.
Once a cart of cakes is ready to go, it's sent upstairs to the hotel restaurant, or to the two other locations in Bled that are authorized to serve this "official" Bled Cream Cake.
Once our tour was over (and we got out of the HOT plastic coats!), we went across the street to the restaurant for a slice of the cream cake.
Thumbs up.
And with that, we left Bled with full tummies and set off for Ljubljana, the capital city of Slovenia.
This is the coat of arms (which is also on the city flag). The castle in Ljubljana towers over the city, and the chapel inside is dedicated to St. George the Dragon Slayer. Dragons are everywhere.
It was a bit of a dreary day, but we were looking forward to spending the afternoon exploring the city.
Cobbler's Bridge
Triple Bridge
Couples leave locks on the Butcher's Bridge
I have no idea why there are also these creepy bronze skulls with locks on them too. ??
From the Dragon Bridge
Many companies offer boat rides along the Ljubljanica river that runs through the center of town, so we bought some tickets and waited for the boat...
and waited (and posed for pics)
and waited some more.
These two pictures (above) are from the Triple Bridge which is the most famous in the city. If only I had a crane shot you'd be much more impressed. :)
More "trained" trees like we saw in Amsterdam.
The verdict? While we love the city, no boat tour is necessary. This isn't Amsterdam, folks, and the best part of old town is very small. Since we were on a river, we went upriver for about 40 minutes (only 15 of which were in the old beautiful part of town), then turned around and came back to what we'd already seen. If we're ever back here, we'll save our pennies for something else.
We checked into our riverfront hotel, had some dinner and rested up for our last day in Slovenia!
