Summer 2018

We started off from Italy this morning sad to go. John decided to take the non motorway route through Austria to Germany. The Scenery was absolutely magnificent. We stopped for lunch at a delightful hotel beside a lake in the Austrian mountains. They served a complementary amuse bouche ( I’m not sure what they called it) followed by a dish of potato gnocchi with spinach & Brie topped with a salad of herbs. We then shared a Raspberry desert and coffee served by the lake. While we ate lunch a guest at the hotel caught a fish I couldn’t identify about 2 foot long and called the chef out to kill it and gut it, which he did out of sight. Then took it back to the kitchen presumably to cook. We started out again only to find traffic lights on red with people sitting outside their cars! We looked past them and saw that there was a timer with 12 minutes to go. An information board stated that the lights were green between 30 past the hour and 45 past the hour ( I assume the other way had the hour until 15 minutes past). When we went on the road we could see why. It was tiny. It wriggled so much that it just looked like a block on the sat bag. The views were breathtaking but we weren’t allowed to stop or slow down to take photos. Also on the way and heard the cow bells and also a couple of cows with them round their necks. It was just how I imagine Austria! We arrived at our accommodation, just inside Germany, later than we had hoped so I didn’t get chance to use their outdoor swimming pool (a lake with steps). The Hotel is very spacious with balcony and mountain views this time. Beds have the individual duvets on a double bed we first saw in Latvia, and balcony doors and windows have the strange hinges I fist saw in the last hotel in Italy where you turn the handle one way and it opens as a usual door and turn it the other and it drops back to let air in at the top. In Italy I thought I had broken the door until I realised. See little things...... We then had a walk and a picnic dinner and then back to the accommodation to watch England play football. All I can say is that after the game John played Eric Idle’s ‘Always look on the bright side of life’!Read more