10th September (Diary according to Daniel Hiles)

Up for day exploring Ljubljana before setting off to Venice. After stuffing ourselves at breakfast we set off to castle, at top of the tower there is an amazing view! Real mountains and the sun is out despite chill in the air. After castle we have stroll around town and have lunch before meeting back at hotel at 15:00 and getting 16:10 train to Venice-quite long delay. Finally get going and travel past some absolutely fantastic scenery-by some way the most beautiful countryside so far, even nicer than Southern Germany (well in my opinion anyway). Arrived in Venice about an hour late and first impressions are really good as we can see Grand canal as soon as we leave the train station. After not being able to find hotel for 10mins we get Holden on the case and he finds it soon with some exceptional eye work. Dump bags off and go for explore-grumpy Mike goes in other direction-but the 3 of us head off to quieter area of Venice, really beautiful and, for once, Venice is pretty much how we expected. We avoided a day without beer by having a Budvar on the train so as to not lose 21 day in a row record so far. Back to bed at 12:30 in comfiest bed of travel!