Innsbruck - day 14

We were up early today to say goodbye to Rowena and Paul. What fantastic hosts they have been, and it has been great to meet them and share many stories. Rowena is an amazing cook, and Paul has lots of stories about Switzerland. It was lovely staying in a house for 2 nights as well – not that we don’t love Nico!

The road trip was fairly uneventful though it was extremely windy in parts – ie wind blowing hard (why does windy have 2 meanings?) Nico is rather top heavy with the large luton and the sideways wind really knocks him around. We did drive into Litchenstein (just because we could), and there wasn’t really a lot to see there. And then it was off to Austria, and our destination for the night which was Innsbruck. Our campsite was up in the hills, so we parked up and then took the courtesy bus into the city. That was after a wee lie down for me, my head cold has taken hold so am definitely below par, but hopefully it won’t last long.

When we arrive in the city, we planned a route to the gardens. On the way we saw a number of interesting shops, and also had the most amazing views of mountains at the end of every road we looked at. The gardens were quite nice with lovely tulips. There were big sized chess sets with local men playing with them. Then we walked back into town and went into heaps of shops with interesting things to look at. Then we saw the Swarovski shop – lovely crystal jewellery, ornaments etc. We were in there for quite a while. We plan to go to the Swarovski museum park tomorrow on our way to Salzberg. I also found some raspberries for 2 euros, really yummy! There was this amazing shop where you could buy schnapps and fruit liquers and you chose your own glass bottle to be filled. The bottles were in a vast array of shapes so it was very interesting. I bought a neoprene cap from a outdoorsey clothes shop that had loads of lovely clothes which were quite different to things that I have seen before. I thought the cap would be good for out on the water as it is washable and floats.

When we left the campsite, we thought the bus back went at 7.20pm. When we got off the bus we asked the driver where we caught it back from. He was very gruff, and when I first asked if he spoke English I got ‘NEIN NEIN’, and asking for where we caught it back was nearly too much for him. So we got back there before 7 in plenty of time, but there didn’t seem to be another bus back this evening. So we caught a taxi for 20 euro which wasn’t too bad.

Jody is a pretty amazing cook, and cooked some lamb fillets to perfection which we had with salad and foccacia. I had picked up a couple of small movenpick sorbets at a gas station, and found that our freezer works rather well. We have stocked Nico with all sorts of tasty treats which we try from time to time. After dinner we had some planning time for where to next. We have that a lot more sorted than a couple of days ago, and even know where we expect to be for the next 3 days!Read more