Lake Bled to Portland, OR flights/airlines

When specifically are you flying? Day of week? How are you getting to the start of your tour (based on your other post, you're starting in Prague)? Are you unable to add one day to the end of the tour for transportation? My last trip home from Turkey I broke up a very long trip with an overnight in Amsterdam (stayed right at the airport). It wasn't much cheaper but definitely less awful travel-wise.

FWIW I did the RS Central Europe tour when it was "Eastern" Europe. I flew to Prague on Delta via JFK. At the end of the tour I took the train from Lesce Bled train station to Salzburg, stayed overnight, then went on to Munich by train and a flight back to Portland via Atlanta.

Have you checked Venice? there are vans from Ljubljiana that take about 3 or so hours and lots of flights direct to the US-means it might just be one connection from a gateway.

I would look at the Delta flights from Amsterdam.

We live in Portland and flew non-stop to London on British Airways; it wasn't that bad at Heathrow. I then flew home from Amsterdam via London, again direct from London to Portland. Once you get into the airport at Heathrow and through the security, it's not too bad to wait out your time for your flight there. Charles de Gaulle Airport is far worse to transport through in my opinion.

British Airways was a nice flight, and I was impressed with the staff and the whole experience.

I guess it depends on when you are traveling, but it looks like most days this summer you can fly LJU to AMS to PDX with a 2 hr 30 min layover at AMS on KLM.

Thanks everyone!!! We're not leaving (for Prague) until mid-Sept. Lots of good ideas here to consider. Might spend an extra day in Lubljana and do a quick bike tour, but that will put us on a Saturday flight. Fewer people around if a problem should occur.
We did like British Airways.
We hope our trip through Heathrow five years ago was an anomaly. We never would have made it had it not been for three flight attendants who told us they were heading that way and led us through a mile long maze of hallways, escalators, bridges and an elevator before dropping us off at the base of another escalator that was backed up for the line through customs. 😟 We've never had problems at either CDG or Orly in Paris. All just the luck of the draw, I guess. Munich sounds interesting if we weren't hitting at the same time as Octoberfest. But haven't ruled it out yet. LOL
Will start cementing plans in the next few days. Thank you all again!

I have transferred at Heathrow multiple times and never had an issue. Simply follow purple signs for flight connections.

Have you checked flights out of Zagreb? It's a 1:10 hour train ride from Ljubljana and an interesting city on its own.

From a quick check I see some flights to Portland with 2.5 layovers through Frankfurt or Amsterdam. We connected via CDG on Air France coming home in May.

I guess it depends on when you are traveling, but it looks like most
days this summer you can fly LJU to AMS to PDX with a 2 hr 30 min
layover at AMS on KLM.

This is true, however the KLM flight to Amsterdam from Portland is not daily service so depending on your tour dates it isn't a good option. I did a quick search based on RS September tour dates flying to Prague and home from Ljubljana. The better options IMHO are flying Delta/KLM via Amsterdam or Delta/KLM via JFK on the way and Amsterdam on the way back. Unfortunately the ticket prices are pretty astounding at the moment so I hope you find a reasonable fare.

I would recommend you arrive in Prague a day early (minimum) as there is a lot to see there and the tour barely scratches the surface, plus jet lag recovery.