Another day another country, one that we can both add to the list, Austria. The journey seemed to take ages which may have been down to me not programming the satnav to take into account toll roads but no matter with autobahns wand no speed limit I was able to go faster safely with the built in Penny braking system......!
The scenery was spectacular mountains covered with pine trees and nearly the middle of summer, snow. Finally we made it into Innsbruck and found the old town which has a lot of old buildings (surprising really for an old town), we found most of the famous ones including Goldenes Dachl, so after a brisk walk around it was time for coffee and pastry, I'll say this the Austrians know their stuff. The weather was not brilliant it rained a little bit and the temperature had dropped from Meersberg although we were a thousand metres higher.
We came across the cable car station and decided as we were here Penny would overcome her hesitation re flying up a mountain suspended on a cable and experience the alpine way. The first part of the journey was via a funicular railway and then transfer to the cable for the trip to the top. Up and up we went in the cable car which could hold ninety-five persons with one other couple who turned out to be from Sydney... and a very serious mountain biker and his very serious bike. When we reached the top the Aussies stayed inside the building as they had no warm gear on, we being prepared as always were fine apart from Pennys hand when she threw a snowball. The very serious mountain biker had a last cigarette and when I asked him where he going down from he just pointed over the edge into the fog, sure enough helmet on over he went and down he went and we never saw him again...
Talking of fog it was actually cloud, we could see nothing from the top apart from the snow lying about and at one stage Penny disappeared then arose out of the mist like a mountain spirit, well no not really it was the same one...
The journey back was uneventful so after a hard day on the mountain we retired to the town for beer and schnitzel, Penny had prosceco and deer noisettes.
Next morning or today as we like to call it we set off for Verona and again I had set up the satnav to avoid toll roads so we started off on a five hour journey that should have taken three and we soon found out why, on a minor road with twists and turns and everytime we turned we could see the motorway, for every kilometre they went we went three so we turned back and took the highway. One good thing though was at the start we came across the ski jump for the Winter Olympics that were held in Innsbruck, twice I believe, it was set in a nice park and we could take some fine pictures
Well we leave the Germanic states and head for Italy. One thing I won't miss about it is, in my opinion the overuse of the word fahrt, in fact very rude to Australians with their ausfahrt everywhere and they always wish you a Gute Fahrt, funny people.....
Raging river near the hotel
Innsbruck
The Golden house
I'm ok
Hans and Helga on the mountain top
and Penny appeared out of the mist.....
can you see anything yet?
and schnitzel
why thank you !!!!! funny people
Plaque says Mozart lived here
serious dude and his equally serious bike
when the snow lay round about.........
practising my ski moves
after a hard day on the mountain time for a beer
hmmmmm beer!