Join us for a week in the beautiful Austrian Tyrol, taking in lakes, castles, mountains and the cities of Innsbruck, Kitzbühel and Salzburg.
Each article is reached by clicking/tapping the photographs below. A link on each page will bring you back to this index page.
Friday 15 August 2003. It's our final night at the Harfenwirt Hotel in Niederau, Austria.
All ready for our last meal. It was taken by one of our waiters, who had taken to us after one night when I went to the bar to find him almost beside himself at a French lady who had bought a bottle of red wine and was demanding "Glass! Glass!" She was already holding four glasses and behind the bar the bemused waiter was shouting "You've got glasses!" "Non! Glass!" was the response. It twigged with me. "Glace?" (ice?) I said, "...pour la froid?" (for cold?) She turned with a dramatic gesture "Oui!" she said, drawing the word out to at least a dozen letters longer than it should have been. "Avec la vin rouge?" (with red wine?) I asked doubtfully. "Oui!"
Almost every night we had played a few games of rummy on the hotel veranda. After the event described above, the female members of the French party had taken to waving and cooing at me every time they passed. Very disconcerting... "Ah oui! Bon soir!" [nervous laugh]. Fran thought this hilarious...
Another of the British couples had thought playing cards a good idea to fill the night and bought a pack in Austria only to find there wasn't a single card with a value under seven... "Did the pack not feel thin?" I asked. "No," came the reply, "I just thought what a bargain they must be at the price!"
The waiters all made a fuss of Mum, possibly for the simple reason that her loud cackling laugh annoyed the French...
Night falls on Niederau and the Harfenwirt. It was a shame that there weren't more lights on in the bedrooms, it would have brightened the picture up a bit. Mum, Dad and Fran are standing near one of the lights but you can't see them. They are peering into the dark saying things like "Where's he gone???"
Sunday, 10 August 2003. It was our first full day in Austria for this trip and we are booked on an excursion to Lake Achensee and Tratzburg Castle.
Our coach is picking up from our sister hotel, the Schonnschein or "Sunshine" hotel. We were first meeting our holiday rep here before the trip, to take up or otherwise any optional outings.
There is only one day we don't fancy which would be our last day. I start to plan an outing for that day and then it's time to get on the coach for today's trip. We travel through some typical Tyrolean landscapes. Many of the buildings have large stores of wood for burning fuel over the winter. Some have sheds, others pile it around the house for added avalanche protection.
I thought at the time that we had been to Achensee before, during our 2000 trip. But that had been Königsee. So I didn't recognise anything particularly!
It was quite dull when we arrived but before long the sun came out, turning the lake a bright and beautiful turquoise colour and raising everyone's spirits.
We heard the deep note of a diesel engine and turned to see the arrival of the Nostalgia Bus. This was a regular service and although our schedule didn't allow us to go for a ride on it, it was worthy of a closer look.
The driver was in full traditional dress, complete with lederhosen, leather shorts.
Then it was back to our own bus for the trip to Tratzburg Castle. This was taken from our moving coach so is a little blurred. Unfortunately no photography is allowed inside.
Outside though was the mangled wreckage of a car. Maybe you had been wondering from a previous comment why the Austrians might need to stack wood against their buildings in case of avalanche? This is why. The damage to the car was caused by something slightly larger and weightier than a snowball...
We arrive back at Niederau following our tour and the coach driver is good enough to drop off the Schonnschein guests and then carry on up the hill to our hotel. The local pony club is setting off for a late afternoon ride.
Saturday, 9 August 2003. We fly with Mum and Dad from Manchester to Salzburg, for a holiday at the Hotel Harfenwirt in Niederau in the Austrian Tirol.
This was a typical modern Austrian hotel with balconies hung with flower baskets of matching colours.
Dad had earlier this year a huge operation for cancer of the oesophagus and was a bit frail. Here he is wondering whether to have a sneaky go on the harp... Our host, hotelier Herbert Thaler, played the harp - although we never heard him play as he played one night at his other hotel down the road, "down" meaning a fairly steep hill, which was too much for Dad to walk back up after a full day's outing.
The Dining Room as seen from our table looking towards the breakfast bar where the large party of French guests would gather each mealtime to greet and kiss each other, mill about and generally get in everyone else's way...
There wasn't a great deal of time for sketching during this holiday, but one night I walked up the road from the hotel and found this log-built barn. It was the home of - of all things - a llama! A young couple walked by and started to chat to me, but my German is just a touch rudimentary I'm afraid and whilst I understood they were being complimentary and saying that the sketch was true to life, pretty soon I had to admit I couldn't understand them. They didn't speak English either so after attempts at sign language, semaphore and mime, we grinned, the young lady rubbed my arm in a somewhat sympathetic way and we parted company.
After the entry on the Grossglockner Glacier someone said they wanted to see the road and its hairpin bends so here are a couple of shots showing just a taste of the spectacular scenery there is on the High Alpine Pass to Grossglockner.
Water from the reservoir and other meltwaters cascade down the mountainside in streams, cascades and sometimes giant falls of water, visible from far away.