Lake Bled in Slovenia was beautiful, with the church on the island in the lake.

You ride across to the island on these boats rowed over by a guy stanind up in the back, kind of like a gondola in Venice.

Everyone at Lake Bled.

Finally made it to Venice.

Although Ian didn't seem too impressed on the ferry ride over to the Venice Lido where we were staying.
6-12-10 Saturday
Woke up early as we’ll have to hit the road today going to Venice. Got in 1 good hour at recovery/tempo pace, riding to/and around Filzmoos. I think I’ll miss riding in Germany and Austria, it’s been great.
Drove to Lake Bled, then to Venice. On the way down through Austria, we encountered a ton of traffic, and my GPS recommended I get off and take a side road to avoid the traffic. The GPS unit is updated with slow traffic and other reports and tries to find you the quickest way to your destination. It really took us off the beaten path. We were going up and down this one lane road in the middle of no where, and I was starting to get a little worried. The traffic and taking the detour added about 1 hour to our drive time. Lake Bled is in Slovenia, and you can tell when you cross the border. The architecture is much more bland. They don’t have as many nice chalets, and it’s more industrial looking. Slovenia was part of the old Soviet block. Lake Bled was pretty cool though and very beautiful. There is an island in the middle of the lake with a church on it. Right from the water there at about 90 stairs that lead up to the church. I had heard it’s traditional for new brides and grooms to go the island, and for the grooms to carry their brides up the stairs. They say that about 2/3 make it all the way up the stairs. I was hoping to see some new bridal parties, but we didn’t. We took a boat over to the island and then spent about a ½ hour walking around. On the shore there were lots of people swimming and laying out. The kids wanted to stay and swim, but it was about 4pm, and we had to drive the rest of the way to Venice, which I estimated at about 3 hours, then catch the ferry across to the Lido, then try and find where we are staying. We made it to the ferry and it was a little more expensive than I thought, at about $100 just to take us and the car across to the Lido. I was thinking of maybe taking the ferry back to the main-land to go to church on Sunday, and/or maybe a day trip to Verona, but at an estimated $200 round trip just to the main-land and back, I don’t think we’ll do that. We made it to the Lido. We found the place where we will be staying, and we were going to meet the guy who’s place we are staying at the home, but he wasn’t there. I was able to switch sim cards and contact him via phone and he came over in about 5-10 minutes. The place we’ll be staying at only has 1 bathroom, so it will be a little tougher. After we got the car all unpacked, we walked to the beach and took a little walk on the beach. It will be nice being that close to the beach.