Day 538: Grossglockener High Road

Headed out from Abtenau and headed further south, this time aiming for Italy. To get there, we were taking the Grossglockener High Road, built in the 1930s by the Austrian government as a Depression-era works program to get people employed. It was the first ever road designed as a scenic tourist road, and nobody was sure it would ever attract tourists.

But it did, and today is one of the biggest attractions in Austria! It's bloody expensive - 36 euros for a car, which we only discovered when we got there. But we spent most of the day driving it. Lots of hairpin corners, intense gradients going up and down, and of course lots of incredible views.

They had a whole bunch of information stops at various points along the road, most of which we ended up stopping at, so that was quite good. We wanted to make a decent fist of it since it's likely to become a World Heritage Site next year.

After a lot of driving we crossed into Italy, and settled into our accommodation for the night. It's a funny spot here, because it's Italy but ethnically and linguistically it's completely Germanic. The area was only ceded to Italy after World War I (remember that Italy was on "our" side and fought viciously against the defeated Austro-Hungarian empire).

Moving on tomorrow!Read more