Day 27 - Thu July 7th

Weather - Fine, 25, some brief heavy showers in the early afternoon

Hindsight is a wonderful thing and we both felt that two days in Slovenjia, instead of one night in Aquileia would have been preferable, but that couldn't be helped. And besides, we would have missed out on the sights and tastes we experienced there. After a wonderful breakfast and some travel advice from Clive, we headed back to beautiful Lake Bled. Bled is far more developed (from a tourism perspective) than Bohemj, and this probably has something to do with the fact that it has a castle on a peak overlooking the lake, in addition to a church on a very small island in the centre of the lake.

We parked the car and walked around some of the lake until we found a watercolor artist, who was also renting small boats. I then rowed Nai across to the island and we took a look around the buildings there. Many couples get married there and there is a huge flight of stairs leading from the small dock, up to a quadrangle where the church is located. It is traditional that the groom lugs their betrothed up the stairs. Thankfully, we weren't getting married.

It was incredibly serene, even though pretty much every tourist chose to tug on the thick rope hanging down from the centre of the chapel roof to ring the church bell. A church had been there for many hundreds of years, with the current, largest one since the late-1800's. Within the church, they also displayed artifacts from previous church structures that had been on the site. In addition, they sold hand-made lace and Slovenijan Honey Wine (for the women, when they is having the baby - for strength) and Honey Brandy (for the fun) made by a local 'bee-farmer'.

After rowing back we steered towards Austria (only 25 mins away) and then through the many tunnels back to Vienna. Coincidentally, Clive (remember... the chef) did his apprenticeship at Hotel Austria, in Vienna, where we were staying. It would have been a very ritzy place back in the 50's. Today, it didn't rate high on the 'stars' scale (I think only a 2), but it still had all of that old-world charm and was still very luxurious.

After checking in we went for a walk and then thought about trying to locate the "Palmenhaus", a restaurant in a glass house where you are surrounded by palms. It was getting late, so we didn't like our chances, but Cory new that the "Schmetterling haus" (or butterfly house) in the Burgarten looked like what the Palm House had appeared like on its website. And wouldn't you know, it...? There it was, right next door.

The final night of our trip was spent eating a wonderful meal in wonderful surrounds, guessing what the people around us were saying and why they were there (we both said afterwards that the couple next to us met on the net and were having their first date - and he was failing miserably!)