Corfu and Lunch at The Golden Fox

Sunday 25 August 2024. We are in Corfu for the day and have booked an excursion out into the beautiful Greek countryside with a meal and spectacular views.

The coach has some climbing to do before we reach our destination for lunch and passes through one village where the road between the buildings on either side is so narrow that it is traffic light controlled as two vehicles approaching head-on would have no room to pass.

This is the Golden Fox, a hotel, villa and studio complex as well as a restaurant. We are set four to a table and sit with an American couple, Terry and his wife.

The views are just wonderful and we are sitting outside on a terrace whilst a succession of waiters bring dish after dish of starters - far too much to eat as a full meal for which we have already made our choices!

The waiters cheerily take away dishes still loaded with food, though we have made valiant efforts. It is the Greek way and so more dishes arrive with the main course - equally as tasty and equally as plentiful as the starters had been. I'm banned alcohol these days but an ice-cold coke went down very well and Miss Franny and our fellow diners each got an attractive cut glass carafe of wine to wind their tonsils around.

We forego desserts in preferance for having a tub of ice cream later. At the end of the terrace behind me was a lower level terrace with a swimming pool.

Most of our fellow coach passengers were taking photos of the views from the terrace and chatting. I made sure I thanked the staff in the bar area and kitchen and we went around the buildings to an ice cream outlet in a side bar. Here we are, sitting on a bench by the road at the back of the restaurant / hotel.

Our guide for the day, dressed in a typical Greek-style long white dress chatting with some of our group. We got back onto the coach and our next stop was at a souvenir shop and bar. We had a quick look in the shop but then repaired to the bar where another coke for me and another glass of wine for Fran kept us cool and we found a table outside with some shelter from the sun.

The coach then returned us to the port, where we and the passengers from two or three other ships were battling to elbow paths through the security gates and x-ray machines before the walk along the pier to NCL Pearl.

We have joined so many ships here at this same pier in the past. Ocean Village and Thomson/Tui/Marella Celebration, Spirit, Dream and Majesty to name just a few. This current cruise was our 28th cruise. We'd love to notch that score up some more!

Return to NCL Cruise 2024 Index

Taken for a Run Round Salzburg

Thursday 17 August 2000. After last night, raindrops on noses are not quite one of my favourite things! However I'm prepared to forgive and forget when faced with such a beautiful morning with early morning mist against the mountains and the prospect of a day in Salzburg - the city of The Sound of Music.

We've walked a bit further than usual after breakfast and before the coach leaves and we found the walkers about to board the little train for Zell-am-See.

Coaches are not allowed into Salzburg, except to drop off and pick up at pre-arranged times. John and Keith deliver us into the hands of local guide, Margarethe. After three people though she drops them and asks the drivers, "Please just leave them on the pavement..."

She takes us on a walking tour of the city for almost an hour. She sets off at quite a ridiculously fast pace and soon we are strung out in a long straggly line as we stop to take photos or find it difficult to keep up. Apart from anything else, Salzburg is crowded and we are not sure if the people we are following can see anyone from the coach in front of them or whether we are just wandering aimlessly...

For some reason there were fibreglass cows all over the place, painted in different designs.

Saltzburg has many squares, as we shall see once we get up to the castle! The cathedral stands in a square and a huge stadium had been erected for a concert. There was no way I could take a single photo of it from top to bottom as you couldn't stand far enough back. I took three and have stitched them together.

There are no less than five organs in the cathedral, all of which must be played seperately. The largest, high above the entrance at the back was played only for notable occasions, whilst Mozart himself was not averse to twiddling the ivories of one of the others. He was born in Salzburg and we were to see his birthplace a little later in the tour.

If you watch The Sound of Music You will find a troupe of von Trappers traipsing through this very arch. The only thing we found going through it though was a horse and carriage - but quite splendidly adorned with a miniskirt... In fact there are not many references in Salzburg to The Sound of Music at all. Hollywood has one take on the story. The Austrians perhaps have a different perspective on it.

Hang on a minute, the gang have stopped whilst Margarethe explains something. I couldn't hear her half the time and gave up after a while. Not a von Trapp in sight... Margarethe: please start at the very beginning...

Here's a flight of stairs at the side of a courtyard that may be familiar from the concert sequence in The Sound of Music. It's not in the castle however (which we shall see in the next article).

We come to a large square where a thriving market has been set up. The surrounding palaces are quite something. One of them was Mozart's birthplace.

So a quick look around the market and try to keep Margarethe in sight in the crush of people!

The cheese stall. The market obviously attracts stallholders from all over the place. The young lady was Dutch and in case her cheese wasn't enough, she has a whicker basket full of plain wooden clogs on the ground.

Miss Franny: "Isn't that Christopher Plummer?" Me: "No, it's a fruit and veg stall - they're just ordinary plums..."

Margarethe managed to round us all up and herded us into a very crowded street. "Now ve haf valked you many tvisty turns and you are all lost and disorientated, I leaf you here in zis busy street to find your own vay! Meet back at the bus station vhich you cannot remember and don't be late because der bus can only vait fife minutes! Unt der virst von back ist der sissy!" Disclaimer: she didn't really say that. But, then again, she didn't need to really...

It is a very quaint street with lots of swinging signs outside the shops. We find somewhere for lunch then, successfully fed and watered, we decide to head on up to the castle. Miss Franny stops to admire some plates. Thay are decorated with real gold. I work out the price in UK pounds and push her quickly on...

The Hohensalzburg fortress. It's an impressive chunk of masonry and design, giving an air of both calm beauty and impregnable mass. Should we walk it or take the easy route we wonder? There is a funicular railway that takes you to the lower levels of the castle.

We decide to take the funicular railway up and walk down - we may not be in a rush but we are no fools... This is a funicular railway with a driver's cab! We were at the bottom and were going up. It was crowded and I couldn't see if we had a driver or not.

The car itself was quite steeply racked and had three or four compartments for passengers. At the top of the slope we looked back to watch the cars going up and down for a while. It doesn't look so bad here but I was looking down somewhat - tilt your head to the left a bit!

Ok time to take a few photos and stitch them together to form a panorama. We have arrived at the castle which looms over behind us opposite the view you see here. For those who wish to try their hand at spotting the joins there are four photos...

Return to Austria 2000 Index

The Gisela Express to Kitzbühel

Tuesday 15 August 2000. We are at Zell-am-See railway station where we are about to board the Gisela Express to Kitzbühel.

The train was one of the first electric trains in the world. Most of it dates from the 1930s but the original mail sorting room housed in a 1920s carriage is attached to the train.

The coach, with John driving, will meet us at Kitzbühel.

Keith is on his day off and so in civvies as he cheerfully waves us onto the train. He'll jump onto the Leger coach with John for the day.

We have a reserved carriage and get to know a few more people during the journey. The carriage is full, it's just that everyone else is crowded up to the windows! However, on the left, Barbara sticks her elbow out for the camera...

Once the train has got going lunch is served by costumed waitress service. Hot dog in a bun.

Well, nearly all in a bun as can be seen here! Barbara laughs as her hubby (whose name I didn't get, sorry!) wonders why the bun isn't bigger... The buns weren't cut in half, there was just a hole in them. People kept wandering down to the buffet car to see how it was done whilst everybody hoped it wasn't the same implement used to put holes in the doughnuts...

Lunch over, there was time to go out to view the mountains. The carriages were too old to be fully enclosed at the couplings and we had a great time standing on the footplates, taking photos of the scenery.

These little wooden bits of decking were safe enough for intelligent people. I have to wonder whether they would be considered so now after decades of people expecting to sue because they are too stupid to keep themselves safe without being told explicitly not to chop their own hand off with an axe... Common sense is pretty rare these days I find.

"I just wanted to see if I could stand on it..." Well, who could have guessed?

Meanwhile we are approaching a stop. This was to be a photo stop for people to take photos of the train and costumed staff and to have a look at the 1920s postal sorting office in the specialised carriage.

Here it is - dear me, there's not been a lot of mail to sort on this particular journey!

The guard and stewardesses pose outside the postal carriage.

The locomotive was an electric locomotive 1020.44 dating from 1945. The Giselabahn railway was opened in 1876 by Emperor Franz Joseph and was named after his second daughter with his wife, Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary,Elizabeth, nicknamed Sisi. The opening of the railway made it possible to travel from London to Istanbul by train for the first time and it thus started the almost legendary Orient Express.

"Bo-o-o-o-a-rd!" It's time to take a last photo and get back onto the train as we carry on into Kitzbühel. We take our seats for a good minute or two before it's back to looking out of the windows and standing on the footplates. As we pull into the station at Kitzbühel we can see the coach waiting in the car park. We have a couple of hours free time to look around the town first though.

Return to Austria 2000 Index

Königsee and the Jennerbahn

Monday 14 August 2000. After our morning in Berchtesgaden, we got back to the coach and motored on for another while before coming to Königsee.

We passed several of these wonderful chalet style buidings both large and small, but always exquisitely decked out in blooms of colour. We learned that the "see" part of Königsee's name meant "lake".

In the case of Königsee it was a crystal clear turquoise lake with tiny fish darting from underneath at any bread thrown to the ducks. Towering over the lake were several mountains.

We had a couple of hours free time and we had at first thought to go for a cruise on the lake.

However the long line of people who had all had similar thoughts put us off a wee bit and we stood for a while drinking in the sights and sounds. Before we found our drink though, Fran saw a notice for a cable car and we set off to find out if the queue was any less than for the boats. It was! In fact there was no queue whatsoever! The man in the kiosk told us that the car took 30 minutes to go up plus another 30 to come down again - plenty of time for us to take the trip and to spend a bit of time at the top.

So we walked through the turnstiles and got straight into a small two-person cable car which after a short pause launched us off up the mountain on the Jennerbahn. Again by way of explanation, Jenner was the name of the mountain and bahn means train or in this case a linked series of little cabins, suspended from the cable above.

The cable car was glazed with plastic and the door was locked. It very soon got boiling hot in there! The cable car opened in 1953 and due to the length of the cable (4.2km or 2.6 miles) it has to pass through a middle station where the gradient changes.

We approached, passed through, and left the middle station without any bother and the cable began to rise more steeply. The upper section of the cable was not only steeper but longer than that from the lake to the middle station.

And here we are, arriving at the top station. The Jenner mountain stands 1874m tall (6148ft) and the cable car travels 4.2 kilometers to get to the top.

The view from the top. We looked for the lake far below but were not able to spot it. Possibly because the cable car route takes a bt of a dog-leg bend at the middle station and also because the lower portion of the mountain is heavily forested.

We checked the time and decided there was plenty of time to sit and have a drink at the top of the mountain before climbing back into another oven for the journey back down!

The journey back down was as scenic if not more so than the jouney up. We had the added excitement of watching out for the lake to come into view. As we left the Jennerbahn we took a last look at the lake then back to the coach. A family of four are missing.

After half an hour they tumbled into the coach, breathless. They had been told that the boat trip would get them back in time but in fact they had had to get off at the first stop and then had to apologise and beg to queue-jump a line of 100 people to get back. "Was it worth it though?" one of the others asked. "No - we spent all the time worrying that the coach would have gone!"

Return to Austria 2000 Index