Vienna to Venice (or possibly other way around)

[whoof]

I looking at riding from Vienna to Venice next summer, does anyone have any experience of the following.

Campsites in/near either Venice or Vienna.
Hotels in Venice or Vienna with somewhere to securely store a couple of bikes.
Facilities for bike storage in general in Austrian and Italian Hotels. My current experience with two Italian hotels near Milan have been a straightforward 'no' and put it round the back by the laundry.
How busy hotels in Austria are in late June, can you just turn up or would you need to book in advance.
Anywhere nice along the way worth a visit. Some lakes in Southern Austrian for a nice swim perhaps?

Many thanks

[eileithyia]

Mostly camped when last in Italy, but on the occasions we did not, we no problem storing bikes somewhere, though we did not use 'hotels' as such but looked for signs advertising 'zimmer' we stopped at a farm, an out of season ski camps site. At the first we were accommodated in a ground floor room with bathroom that was part of the large open ground floor garage area, the bikes shared space with the tractors and other farm machinery..... and we had plenty of space to spread out wet clothes (it was very wet that evening) to dry.
At the second it was clear there were lots of caravans with built on blaconies, however we were ushered into the apres ski rooms, invited to light the large fire, and sleep in doors on the bench seats.... yes it was extremely wet again.

Campsites in Venice, in those days the Bike Bus was running to Venice and we camped at 'their' site on the south side of the lagoon, along the lido.... and used the water taxi into Venice to see the sights..... there are lots of campsites along that strip.

[mnichols]

Have toured in Italy quite a lot, and in Austria a bit. Always stayed in hotels. Never had a problem storing bikes, but have always contacted them in advance to check

[whoof]

Many thanks for the replies.
The private 'zimmer' rooms sounds like a good option I'll keep a look out for them.
If bike storage is generally pretty good we will play it by ear as booking ahead is not an option. Although we have a rough idea of where we are going to stop before setting off this often changes mainly due to factoring in a few days off and we decide on these depending on things the weather and how nice a particular place is.

[Vorpal]

Ski resorts are a really good place to stay in the summer. I have on several occasions approached smaller ski resorts on a summer evening, and negotiated a substantial discount on the spot. I looked for independent ones with not too many cars in the car park. Of course it can mean that they aren't the best run establishments, but I've not had any that were really awful, and most have been excellent. I have paid the equivalent of youth hostel prices a couple of times, for really nice rooms, once my brother and I even had a balcony overlooking the ski slopes.