Nicholas & Kathryn go AWOL

I have one word for Slovenia.....BEAUTIFUL. It is by far one our favourite destinations of our trip this far. I can not recommend it enough! We left Split, Croatia on the 28th, heading for Ljubljana in Slovenia for the night. We briefly stopped off in Zagreb to catch the next train. We stayed only one night in the capital, but got up the next morning to take a look round the small city, bought some Slovenian glass tealight holders which are pretty cool. From there we caught the train to Bled (Lake Bled). We met our host Andrea and she showed us to our room.....house more like it! We had our own room with bathroom and living area, then downstairs we had access to a fully equipped kitchen, dining and living room!!! She showed us on a map the best places to visit and eat at. We originally intended on only staying 2 nights, but by her telling us all about the place we clearly knew that 2 was not enough and booked another 2 giving us 4 nights in Bled. That afternoon we went out and tried two of the most famous Slovenian cakes, yum. The following day we hired bikes and ciked up to the gorge (got a little lost somehow) and walked through the gorge and up a hill to a church (Katarina). It is absolutely amazing scenery in there, check out Nicholas' album on facebook when he gets round to maing an album! After that we headed back down to the lake to cycle round it (6.5km). Nicholas' bike chucked a mental so we had to walk the bikes back 2km or so to get a new one and start again. We climbed up a mountain to get a great view of the lake, the small church on the island in the middle of the lake and the castle on the hill. That's where all the postcard pics are from apparently. Also on our stay there we went to Lake Bohinj for the day and went up the Slovenian skifield gondola which took us to 1537m, and boy it was steep going up!!! Obviously with no snow about the place looked a bit barron so you had to use the imagination to see how it could be a skifield! On the last day in Bled we walked up to the castle and went through the museum and herb shop. From Bled we caught the train to Venice where we spent two nights in a camoing ground on the mainland overlooking the island itself. Caught the ferry to Venice and walked into the square only to find water starting to emerge from the pipes..... already sinking we thought... turns out it was high tide, but still, a sinking island. We went to Palace Ducale and met a lovely 75 year old lady from New York. She was in front of us in the que and we let her sit down to rest her recnstructed knee while the line progressed. When we let her back in the staff tried to cut the que off right behind her meaning we would still be waiting, BUT the lovely lady said we were with her, and our relationship with our honorary Grandma commenced! When we were deciding what pass to buy she was asking us what we were going to do today, I thought nothing of it until she went up to pay and said she was shouting us!!!! Far out we couldn't believe it, we'd only know her 5 seconds and she was paying 26 Euro for us to go to the Museums! She said it wasn't everyday she met such sweet people and she wanted to treat us just because. I am still in shock by it! Of course we tried to say oh no we can't accept that, but she wouldn't have it. So we made damn sure we went to some museums to make up for her kindness. From Venice we caught the train to Milan for the night as tomorrow we are off to Greece for some sun and relaxation.