Tuesday 15 August 2000. The train drops us off at Kitzbühel station and first thing we see is the coach in the car park. John and Keith are sitting in a nearby cafe waiting for us.
We have a couple of hours yet though to explore before we are due to get on the coach for the trip back to Schütdorff and our hotel. The main street is entered through this archway.
Ah good, we have arrived in time for the summer concert! A closer look at the banner reveals that we won't actually catch any of the music making apart from the old chap with a violin playing under the archway that we just passed through. I did drop a few coins in his hat. He nodded his thanks ... and they fell out again...
By now the pangs of hunger were starting to be felt! I'd had a half-hearted go at the hotdog on the train, but I 'm not a fan of hotdogs and donated most of it back to the waitress. We plonked ourselves down in a street cafe and I deep dig under for bestest mine German.
I didn't do so bad, we got what we wanted. We began to realise that the Austrians had a liking for tomato ketchup! It was served with just about everything.
In fact, not long after we left the cafe, we found a shop displaying a silver holder especially shaped to hold a Heinz bottle!
The buildings of Kitzbühel's main street are painted in startling colours.
It was without doubt one of the most beautiful towns we had ever visited.
The view as we approached the end of the main street.
Kitzbühel has its hills and we came to a spot where a bridge took one road over the top of another as a sort of two-level crossroads. A curved series of steps allowed us to walk down, traffic had to do a three-quarter circle to do the same.
Looking from the top of the bridge. A stream runs down via a channel cut at the side of the road beneath us.
From the lower road, looking back towards the bridge.
And once again but this time looking from the arched tunnel of the bridge.
Some of the hotels had painted facades, by which I mean painted scenes or pictures here and there, rather than an overall coat of paint. Wrought iron was used extensively for hanging signs and a local cemetery had graves with wrought iron crosses instead of gravestones.
Now and then we found small sculptures of a proud owner or past owner of a hotel, looking out over the entrance. We strolled back towards the coach, taking the back streets until we reached the small bar and cafe across from where Keith and John were standing after opening the coach to let the air-conditioning cool it down. Time for zwei kleine bier!
The coach struggled uphill on the way home. "You must have been eating a lot!" quipped Keith. That night the drivers stayed up until late waiting for a DAF mechanic to check the fuel feeds. After our meal we spent most of the night with the drivers in the lounge, talking and laughing with a few of the others. Keith leaned over, "Nick a bread roll in the morning and bring it with you," he said, "Just one will be enough, I'll tell you why when we get there..."
Join us for a most spectacular ride and learn why the entire coach laughed at Fran's bread roll...
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