Ultravox. (and what does that song mean anyway? Great song, but – you know what I’m going to say).
The Sound of Music.
Holocaust.
These are what spring to (my) mind, when I think of Austria.
At least, they are what used to spring to mind.
Now, I think of…
…and…
The Tyrolean region, in Austria, has an abundance of accommodation options.
We did not choose…
The Bad Hotel, or…
Camping Hell (clearly to the disappointment of the future NIDA graduates in the picture).
We stayed at the (not too appealingly-named, either) Sport Vital Central. Don’t let the name side-track you, though, into thinking it was some average place pushing early morning walks and mung beans.
They do have yoga classes on offer in the mornings, but the real ‘sport’ is outside, on the mountains. No-one seems to need coaxing to get out there, and get involved. Anything active that you do is paid off back at the hotel in the indoor pool, one of the saunas, or the steam room, then followed up with (the ‘Vital’ part), not mung beans, but a 6 course gourmet dinner.
The hotel is 4 star and very comfortable, but it’s winning points are a toss-up between the amazing food at both breakfast and dinner, and the location – stunning!
Ready for the pool and sauna, as soon as we arrived!
First day there, we got the chairlift up – actually, it was three chairlifts up. We could see snow-covered mountains all around, but had no idea that in the middle of summer there would be that much snow. We hadn’t even planned on going to Austria when we packed in summery Belgium, so I had to borrow Sonny’s grip-less Adidas, and I’m hopeless on the ice even with hiking boots!
Two chairlifts up, at 2275m, things got most exciting!
Big, fat chunks of snow fell on us. In summer! So nice.
We didn’t really have much snow fall on us after that, so it was special. We headed for the next lift, to climb to 3250m.
So cold, Belle had to borrow my jacket.
But not as cold as these guys would have been…
Adding fear to crap balance in slippery shoes we went to explore a glacial cave.
Walk through the white-out…
to..
Beautiful, but so cold, and so slippery. The kids all brought gloves and winter jackets, but for European October, not July. They were frozen!
Going back down in the lift.
Level 2 again. Hands defrosted, so time for a quick photo and some throwing practice.
Sleety-heads..
Then down. From the white to the green.
We had only planned to stay one night in Austria, spend the morning on the mountain, and continue on, but we spent the whole day on the mountain, and the lure to do it all again the next day (and follow on with a sauna and that dinner) was too great.
Sonny just had to put his nose to the grindstone…
hahahahaha
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