The scenery is truly beautiful in this part of the Tirol and it's a privilege to be able to see it. Luckily I have a dash came so I'm going to save the footage for posterity!
We arrived at the toll booths to see queues of vehicles waiting to pay to go up the mountain mint costs about £33 per car, which sounds a lot but it's well worth it. The road is full of hairpin bends with very steep inclines and it's a great test of driving skills, also the car! You have to be more careful coming down the mountain as you can burn out the brakes if you are not careful. In the past, we have seen prototype cars being tested on this route, it's that challenging! I have to say I loved it, apart from the lycra clad cyclists. They insist on breaking the rules of the road and riding two abreast instead of single file. This is SO dangerous, as its bad enough negotiating the hairpin bends as they are, without have to go into the oncoming traffic lane as well.
Some drivers are clearly out of their comfort zone because they drive up so slowly that they hold up the traffic. Fortunately, this has been thought of by the addition of intermittent second lanes so that others can pass. On the other hand, there are the utter lunatics who think they are in a F1 race and tailgate you until they can roar pass. I deal with them by slowing right down until they back off!
The views going up the mountain defy description, so I'll just post the photos I managed to take when we stopped. After a certain height there is still snow, and it remains all year around. There is also a danger of falling rocks and this time we had to stop whilst workmen dealt with them. The lorry is in the left and the snow on the right.
When we finally reached the top of the Grossglockner there were masses of people there already. Unbelievably, there is a multi storey car park at the top! We ended up on the top floor, just before the car park got full, so we were lucky.
When we went down to the bottom we were able to see the glacier. We were shocked! We visited some years ago and were able to go down on a funicular and walk along the glacier. This time it had shrunk SO much that there was hardly any ice left and none where we had walked, it was just green, glacial water.
We had a coffee and the Husband had a passable apple strudel and then we made our way back to the car. Negotiating the exit down the spiral ramp was more difficult that the drive up the mountain! Not for the faint haearted.
I really enjoyed the drive down, which also involves going up! It was great to see the motor cyclists whizzing past us, I was envious as they could overtake all the slow drivers!
We finally made it to the bottom and made our way back to the autobahn which would eventually take us back to the farm. On the way we stopped at two garden centres, one at Saalfelden which was enormous and displayed everything in such an appealing way, even I was interested! We also stopped at the one at Lofer, supposedly to buy our plant like the one at the farm. However, as we about to pay for it I noticed that they had rung up DOUBLE what we had been told the price was! We had been given duff information so suffice to say, we left empty handed! Never mind, I'll buy one at home, it's probably for the best.
We were both tired by now, so we just went straight to Cafe Schmid. As we weren't going out for tea I had a banan split again, as its so filling.The Husband was disappointed when he looked in the chiller. There was NO cake at all. However, they were playing a joke on him as they'd saved him a piece and wrapped it in foil so no one else could ask for it! How's that for service?
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