Day 3

Sunday July 5th

We must have been really tired as we slept in late until 8.15am. It was wonderful to have breakfast outside, overlooking the village and the mountains. We can see such along way in either direction, I could stay here all day!

We went down to the next village, Lofer, for our lunch at another favourite place, the Schweizerhof. We go there every year for Sunday lunch and every year the same waiter welcomes us like old friends.We are so lucky to stay in such a beautiful part of Austria with extremely pleasant people.

When we returned to the farm, I spent time reading in the sun before out next trip down to see the Schmid family. This time we saw ES, the 12yrs old granddaughter, who we've known even before she was born. The family keep a framed photo I gave them of themselves with her mother, M, their daughter-in-law on the counter. This year her English has improved so much. we had a long conversation with her, which was such a pleasure. 

Unfortunately for us she was just about to leave for two weeks to stay with her other grand parents so we didn't spend as much time with her as we would have liked. I think we will come a week earlier next year!

My OH had his usual, cappuccino and Schwarzvelde (Black Forest gateau). I had caramel becher, which is a caramel sundae - gorgeous!!!

We were so full afterwards that we gave our evening meal a miss!

We also visit the village church on every trip to light candles for relatives. It's the most beautiful church I've ever been in and was completely restored by the villagers.

Day 2

Saturday July 5th

We got up early, had a good breakfast and were on the road again by 9am. I bought some bread so we had supplies ready in case we were too tired to find somewhere to eat that evening. 

I had planned a route via Stuttgart and Munich, but Disco Sally had other ideas! She decided that there was a better route, but we had to overrule that as we had no idea where she was routing us. Plus, the traffic was very bad and there were many sets of roadworks. We had expected our journey to take about six hours, but it was seven after all the delays. 

We arrived in Waidring, Austria at 4pm. We went straight to our favourite place, Cafe Schmid. We walked in, having not seen them for a year, and after a wonderful and warm welcome our usual order was placed in front of us! The cakes have to be seen to be believed and the ice cream sundaes are enormous!

Once finished we had to make or way to our new place to stay. Although we have been visiting the village for eighteen years, we were now staying in an apartment on a friends family farm. It is elevated above the village and has the most amazing views of the Steinplatte mountain.

The apartment is really a home from home, which means it is a great place to relax and chill out, which we have every intention of doing!

Day 1

Friday July 4th 2014

We left home in south west Lancashire and drove down to Folkestone to travel over to France via Eurotunnel. The journey was fine and without incident, giving us time to fuel the car so that the next fuel stop should be in Luxembourg.

The new car is excellent, a Land Rover Discovery 4, and the journey is very comfortable. We have named the sat nav system 'Disco Sally' and she seems much more efficient than our usual TomTom,  'Sally Sat Nav'!!

We travelled from Calais to Dunkirk, Lille, Tournai, Mons, Namur then Luxembourg. I had found a fuel station on the border with Germany, where we were staying for the night. The diesel was only 90p (GB£) per litre!!! People were filling up fuel cans as well as their vehicles.

We then made the short journey over the Mosel river to our rest stop for the night, the Hotel Perlerhof in Perl. This is in a small village and the hotel is right in the centre. This was the night that Germany was playing in the world cup, so it was quite rowdy. When they won everyone went nuts! They were driving around in their cars, blasting the horns and trailing flags behind them. we hoped that they wouldn't be doing that all night.

The hotel was small but had excellent accommodation and we really couldn't fault it. We were very tired after such a long journey so fell asleep immediately we got into the very comfortable bed.