Three days in Bled: the famous lake, and the better one behind it

Walk the lake first, whatever time you arrive. It is an hour on a level path, half of it in woods, and it is the only way to understand the geography: the island in the middle, the castle on the cliff, the mountains stacked up behind. Do it clockwise and the island stays in front of you most of the way.

Then take a pletna out to it. The church has been rebuilt several times and the one you walk into is baroque, finished in 1698, with frescoes of the life of the Virgin and a bell that arrived in the earlier Gothic building in 1534. You ring the bell for a wish, and everybody does, so the sound carries across the water all day. The stairway from the dock comes with a local tradition attached: a groom who carries his bride up them is promised a happy marriage, and you will probably see somebody trying.

Finish above it all. The castle sits a hundred metres up on a crag, reached by a steep path from the town in about twenty minutes, and the terrace on the ramparts is where the classic view of the island comes from. The estate was handed to the bishops of Brixen by the emperor Henry II in 1011, which makes this one of the oldest castles in the country, though what you walk around is largely seventeenth century with a 1950s restoration. There is a small museum, a working print shop and a wine cellar in the courtyard, and a restaurant with the best table in Slovenia if the weather is right.

Dinner back down in town.

Take the first bus you can into the Bohinj valley, about forty minutes southwest. The lake at the end of it is the biggest in Slovenia, four kilometres long and completely enclosed by mountains, and it is a different proposition from Bled: no island, no castle, no coach parties, just cold clear water, a pebble shore and the wall of the Julian Alps at the far end. There is a stone bridge at the near end with a small frescoed church beside it, thirteenth century in its bones, worth the five minutes it takes to look in.

Swim, or hire a paddleboard, or walk the northern shore path, which is quieter than the road on the south side. A ferry crosses between the two ends of the lake if you would rather not walk back.

In the afternoon take the cable car up from the southern shore. It climbs to just over 1,500 metres in five minutes and leaves you on an open ski meadow with the whole lake below and, on a clear day, the three heads of Triglav to the north. Slovenia's national mountain is 2,864 metres and sits on the flag; from up here you can see why it got there. Walking back down instead of riding is a two hour descent.

Then Savica, at the head of the valley: a 60 metre fall reached by a zigzag of steps cut into the rock. It is the source of the Sava Bohinjka and, if you have any energy left, the place the day should end.

Be at the gorge when it opens. Vintgar is four kilometres north of Bled, a narrow cut where the Radovna river runs green over rock, and since the 1890s it has been crossed and recrossed by wooden galleries bolted to the cliff, so you walk a kilometre and a half more or less above the water. It ends at a waterfall and a bridge, and you come back the same way or loop over the hill.

It is now ticketed with timed entry, which has fixed the bottlenecks on the walkways but means you should book the day before in summer. The first slot of the morning is the one to take, both for the light in the gorge and because the buses have not arrived.

Back in town, sit on a terrace with a cream cake and the lake in front of you until it is time to go. It is a silly, enormous, entirely local thing to eat and it is the correct way to end three days here.