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Innsbruck, Hohe Tauern National Park & Salzburg - Austria
Sam's & Libby's Highlights & Impressions
• Vols swimming pool with hydroslide, 200 meters from our campground
• Standing at the top of the Olympic Ski Jump, and looking dooown!
• Innsbruck Alpine Zoo incl bobcats, wolves and bearded eagle
• Salzburg's interactive science museum
• Sam finishing the Erogan Trilogy - a cool 2000 pages of reading since England
'Gruss Gott' from Austria
We left Zurich Monday and navigated our way around the small state of Liechtenstein and arrived in Austria - the kids had chosen an Innsbruck campground based on the lake facilities, and it proved to be our first campsite that proudly advertised itself as being 'FULL'! A U-Turn back towards Innsbruck and we found a small campground in Vols - a blessing in hindsight, a great little campsite tucked beneath the towering mountain range and friendly 'hands on' owners. A short steep climb away, the village pool and hydroslide offered hours of cooling off and fun - more fun than the muddy looking lake we left behind at our first preferred site.
Tuesday was a deserved rest day with washing, shopping and swimming on the agenda - not necessarily in that order but a great family score in terms of the boys team T-shirts … very fitting we think, the kids were very excited by their 'Homer Simpson' find for Dad … of course Steven reckons he knows other more fitting recipients for such a T-shirt … but for the moment they are 'limited touring edition' only.
Wednesday we biked the 5km into town along the river on purpose built cycle tracks. Innsbruck is a real gem - the old town was very quaint and has been well preserved. We weaved around the pedestrian streets with the camera snapping frequently then we jumped on the bus to visit the Olympic Ski Jump that towers over the city - what a view from the top, down the take off ramp and as the guide book aptly puts it … "straight into the cemetery"!!!!! that is unbelievably sited off the end of the jump. The athletes reach 90km/h in under 4 seconds as they fly down the 37 degree slope. Back in the city and with the temperatures rising a compulsory icecream stop before biking home.
Thursday morning on our way out of town we visited the Alpine Zoo which the kids really enjoyed - bobcat, bears, moose, golden eagle, bearded falcon and many more animals the morning quickly disappeared. By afternoon we headed east towards the Hohe Tauern National Park and Grossglockner, Austria's highest mountain @ 3797m. Again our planned camping stop in Zell am See was full so we carried on and found another location near the lake. The temperature was 35 so after a quick unpack we biked to the lake - what greeted us was a blue jetty pontoon that extended 50 meters out into the lake, muddy bog on either side, and to get over knee deep we waded out another 100 meters - a metal track had been laid out into the lake which explained the neat alignment of people out into deeper water - naturally all this struggled to feature as a highlight for us. With a quick cool off we biked back to the camper and settled in for the night, that in the high temperatures turned into a spectacular electrical storm.
Unfortunately we had not planned for the weather and the low cloud that came somewhat out of the blue and which greeted us Friday morning. Still we carried on with our planned drive into the reportedly scenic Hohe Tauern National Park where road tolls still apply despite the conditions. Venturing up to 2,500 metres it wasn't long before we were in the clouds not seeing much at all however like all good things the skies did open up enough for us to be treated to mountains scenes - waterfalls, glaciers, peaks and 'Marmotes' a local beaver like alpine animal. We made it upto the look out at Franz Joseph Hohe (sound familiar) overlooking the quite spectacular Pasterzen glacier but in the cloud Grossglocker was not to be seen. By afternoon we travelled to Salzburg. Camping Panaroma is aptly named as it looks out over the city - unfortunately we arrived in rain and the following day it continued to rain - 24 hours without stopping. Cards, reading, emails, writing blogs all managed to consumed our space confined day.
Sunday with overcast but dry skies we headed to Salzburg on our bikes - another 5 km ride along the uncharacteristically swollen muddy river. We wandered the spectacular old town streets and riverside market stalls, feasted on McD's for lunch (the 1st since USA), toured the Salzburg Castle which dates from 1077 and then the highlight for the kids, visited the interactive Science Museum - a total contrast. The Science Museum rated as the kids navigated wheelchairs, hydraulic lifts, fitted their feet in skis and raced down the slopes, jumped off an imaginery ski jump and measured the distance, checked reaction time, generated electricity and found out about levers to name but a few.
We're on the move again … and looking forward to a return to this week's destination The Czeck Republic … Chesky Krumlov in the south on the river Vltava and then onto Prague where Kate is planning to join us for a long weekend which we are looking forward to.
Again thanks for all your contacts and messages which are appreciated by us all.
Till our next blog ... it's 'Auf Wiedersehen' from this Family on OE!
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