Lake Bohinj

Twenty-something kilometres up the valley from Bled, Bohinj is the lake Slovenes tend to prefer. It is the country's largest permanent lake, it sits wholly inside Triglav National Park, and it is hemmed by mountains that fall straight to the shore, which gives it a scale and a moodiness Bled cannot match. There is no ring of hotels — just the stone church of St John the Baptist at the outflow, a couple of villages, and water clear enough to see the bottom well out from shore.

It works as a base rather than a photo stop: swimming and paddling in summer, the Savica waterfall and the Vogel cable car above the southern shore, the Mostnica gorge to the north, and trails climbing from the lake into the high Julian Alps and on towards Triglav itself.