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In 2017, after trips to Iceland in 2015 and Norway in 2016, my wife and I were wondering if there would be any other places in Europe that would compare to those two for a Summer vacation. So, for the Summer of 2017, I sat down and did a lot of research online and concluded that no one country in Europe would offer the kind of amazing beauty that Iceland and Norway had and we would have to combine a few countries together. We finally settled on a road trip through Austria, Slovenia, and the Dolomites region of northern Italy as our destination. The convenience of Schengen and the road network in these countries meant that our trip through multiple countries would be hassle free.

Without further ado, let me take you through our 9 day trip to these places with a day by day write up followed by pictures for that day.

Day 1 (7th June, Wednesday): Our flight landed at a quarter to 1 in the afternoon in Vienna. It was a few minutes early and we went through immigration in no time at all. The airport was quite small for a major tourist destination like Vienna. We found a shop that was selling sims right outside the immigration and quickly bought a Drei sim for 40 euros that packed 2 gig of data. This was going to be enough for running google maps in Austria but would not hold us in good stead for the entire trip as the roaming rates for slovenia and Italy were higher and would necessitate a recharge during the course of our trip. I would also forget my phone’s back cover at this outlet while changing to the Drei sim, which I would only realize much later. We then made our way over to the car rental where we were given a choice of 3 cars. A Dacia Logan, a BMW i3 and a Suzuki Swift. The BMW would set us back by another 80 euros since it had a GPS on board. Coming from India, we were definitely not driving the Swift. So, the choice was between the fuel efficient Logan and the peppy BMW. Being desis, we went with the ‘kitna deti hai’ question and went with the Logan. We would regret this decision, but more about that later.

Over all, it took us just over an hour to get out of the airport and make our way towards Grunersee in southern Austria. We had budgeted around 3.5 hrs for the distance of 190 kms. We did this because of our experience in Oslo last year when a combination of the immigration, traffic and a malfunctioning GPS delayed us by few hours. Vienna was a different story altogether. The roads were great and traffic was virtually non-existent. Vienna and its outskirts were pretty much like any other major European city. As we went further away from the city, the scenery changed quite dramatically. The roads were surrounded by hills and cottages that were right out of picture postcards. We got to Grunersee in about 2.5 hrs though we were driving at a leisurely pace taking in the beautiful scenery.

Once we got to Grunersee, we saw there were two trails that led to two sides of the lake. We decided to get done with the longer trail first. After walking for about 20 mins we reached the lake, surrounded by mountains on three sides. It was beautiful but not mind blowing, and certainly not as green as we had seen in the pics online. We were disappointed ,more so cause we felt this might be a harbinger of things to come, and that overall this trip would just be “nice”. We anyhow decided to check out the other trail as well, since we had enough time on our hands. What a lovely surprise that was ! After a really short walk on the other trail, we reached the lake. It was pure emerald green in color ! The howling wind, the mountain peaks covered with clouds, and the glistening green of the lake living up to its name. All in all it was a wonderful sight to behold. What really surprised us was the fact that there was nary a soul on this side of the trail whereas there were a few families on the other/far less beautiful side. Maybe people didn’t realize there was a second side to the lake, good for us! We went on a clicking spree and took around 20 pics in no time. We sat on a bench for a while soaking in the last few moments at Gruner See and then headed back to our car.

Now all that was left for us to do that day was get to Klagenfurt to our Airbnb accommodation. Around an hour before we reached Klagenfurt, the steering wheel was in the trusted hands of my wife, when she suddenly exclaimed loudly! Right around a bend, a rainbow had appeared suddenly out of nowhere. In fact, not A rainbow, but two rainbows !! There were two perfect semi circles one below the other and were visible for a good 10-15 minutes of the drive. We tried to take pics as best as we could in a moving car, but nothing did justice to the spectacular sight. Gruner see and now two rainbows! Mission accomplished for the day.

We reached Klagenfurt around 8PM, but our hostess was not at home. She had left the key below the doormat so we let ourselves in. The room was small, tidy, with a nice view, and the bathroom was spacious and impeccable. We unpacked, stuffed our faces, met our host when she came by and then went into a deep, blissful sleep.


Grunersee, the green lake!



The fiery sunset and a rainbow seen on our drive

Day 2 (8th June, Thursday): We were up at about 6.30 in the morning after a good night’s rest. Our airbnb was on a hill and the view from the window of our room looked into the valley just as the sun was beaming down on it. I sipped on my morning coffee whilst taking this view in. We freshened up quite quickly and were on our way to cross the border into Slovenia. As picturesque as Austria was, Slovenia actually managed to up the ante on the scenery. It was wilder and the landscape was a darker hue of green everywhere. A little while after we crossed the border, we came across a gas station where we had to make a stop to buy a vignette. We expected to pay 40 euros for a vignette but it turns out they also had a 1 week vignette for 15 Euros. As is usual, whenever we made a stop, we also refilled on food and drinks. We then headed to Lake Bled which was a total of 82 kms from Klagenfurt. We got there at about 9 in the morning and were quite shocked at the crowds heading in the same direction. In fact, we were caught in traffic for about 10 mns on the way which was so unusual for such a thinly populated country. We struggled for a while to find parking. We eventually had to park about a kilometer away from the lake. We walked into the tourist center near the lake to figure out which of the hikes listed would lead us to the amazing views of Lake Bled we saw in pics everywhere. There were a few hikes and the shortest one was only half an hour up one of the hills surrounding the lake and was called Ojstrica. To get to the base of the hill we had to walk around the beautiful lake for about 45 mns. It was a lovely walk and the more we walked away from the main road the quieter it became. We took many pitstops on the way to snap pics of the lake and the church at the center of the lake. There were a few boats taking tourists to the church, but we had no plans of doing that. The hike was quite simple and we got there in about 25 mns. The views from the top were spectacular. The lake with the church on a small island at the center of the lake and the surrounding forests and snow covered mountains gave it a fairy tale look. We took in the views, and snapped some pics. I took a pic of my wife with this background. When I checked the how the pic came out, I could not make her out in the pic. Her yellow and green dotted top blended in perfectly with the background. We sat up there for a while and walked all the way back to the car park. On the way back to the car, we did stop at a bakery and stuffed some cakes and choclate croissant. All in all we spend about 4 hours in and around the lake. At the car park, we were in for a shock when we saw the car had a parking ticket on the bonnet. Apparently, our assumption that we had to pay for the parking on exit was wrong. We had to prepay for the parking and display the parking slip on the bonnet. It was a lesson learned, though we never did actually pay the ticket.

It was a great start to the day and we were looking forward to the Vintgar gorge of which my wife had shown me some great pics. It was only 6-7 kms from the lake and we got there in no time at all. It was past lunch time by now and if anything this place was even more tourist infested than the lake. There was even a school trip on, with about 30-40 kids high on candies making a hell lot of noise. We bought tickets and went along the path constructed around the gorge. The scenery here was quite ordinary and that combined with the heat and the noisy school kids really put us off. We walked for close to an hour till we came to the end of the gorge where it turned into a waterfall. There was a seating area there and a small souvenir shop selling ice creams too. We sat there, made bhel puri and had a good lunch.

It was close to 3 by the time we were done with Vintgar. Our next stop was Lake Bohinj, about 30 kms from the gorge. It was a quiet little lake, not the most scenic, but very pleasant. After our Vintgar experience, we decided to cut out the other gorge, Tolmin from our itinerary on this day. Instead, we spent some time on the banks of the lake, reading our kindle and books and munching on another ice cream. Around 4.30, we decided that since we had time, we would see the slap virje waterfall and the soca valley which we were anyhow driving through, before calling it a day at the airbnb in Idrsko. The drive from Bohinj to Idrsko was one of the most scenic mountainous drives we had ever taken. The next day, while looking through the maps, we realized that this particular drive we had taken was actually through the famed Praedil pass. We stopped at many scenic locations here for the views. Once we came through the pass, we came down the mountains right into the world famous Soca river valley. It was truly out of a picture book. We stopped to snap some pics of the Soca river and had a wonderful time all in all. On the way to Idrsko, we decided to also take the minor detour to finish seeing Slap Virje.

We got to the waterfall around 7 in the evening. It was a 10 minute hike down a path to the waterfall. It was a really small waterfall. Neither of us took much of a fancy to Slap Virje. We took a couple of pics and were surprised to see the dark green water photograph spectacularly. The pics actually exaggerated the beauty of the place. We were happy we didnt waste the next morning getting to this place and being slightly disappointed at the start of the day.

From here, we drove on to Idrsko to our airbnb. Idrsko turned out to be a quaint little village with picture book houses. Our hosts were waiting for us when we got there and we parked our car in the very narrow car park. The airbnb was actually a 4 room house where each room was rented out and the kitchen and bathroom were common. There were some German kids staying there that night who helped us figure out how to light the stove and operate the microwave. We had a delicious dinner of maggi and rajma. We turned in after what turned out to be a quite hectic day.


Hike up to the Ostrjaca viewpoint


Lake Bled from the viewpoint


Panorama from the viewpoint


Lake Bled from the shore


The Vintgar gorge


Slap Virje waterfall (Though Slap itself means waterfall)


Soca river valley close to Bovec

Day 3 (9th June, Friday): It was fair to say that this was the day we were most looking forward to on the entire trip. The pics of Lago Sorapis were the best in all the trip research we had done and the expectations for this day were sky high. It was a bright summer morning in Idrsko and the little village looked spectacular in the sunshine. We came out of the house all set just before 7. We took a few pics of the village before setting off for the day. The Italian border was barely half an hour from Idrsko. As soon as we drove into Italy, there was an enormous change in the scenery as well as the driving. The border areas looked relatively poor when compared to Slovenia. The driving in these places can only be described as “Indian”. There were people tailgating us when we were already at the speed limit. Overtaking and passing from the right was the norm. I mean, they were challenging us at our own game. We could have really shown them, but since we did not want to take any chances with traffic fines, we let it be and let other drivers do whatever they pleased. At various places, we were slowed down by villages and getting stuck behind school buses. Once we crossed Udine, we started going north towards Cortina D’Ampezzo. The terrain started getting mountainous and the scenery started getting better. However, mountainous terrain meant our under powered car was struggling to get going. Our average speeds came down to less then 40 kms per hour and we were not making the time we had hoped to. The last hour of the drive though started providing some wonderful views of the Dolomites. We got to the starting point of the Lago Sorapis trek by a quarter to 11. We got our stuff ready for the trek and started walking just a little later. Within a few minutes of stepping into the Pine forest where the trek started, we found some brilliant Panoramas of the Dolomites and their Pine forests. We stopped every few minutes to click pics though the pics from our phone cameras did not do justice to their majesty. Soon, the trek was uphill which slowed my wife down, who anyhow would not win any medals for her fitness. All the while, we were hoping that the lake would live up to our expectations. If not, we were telling ourselves that the beautiful views on the trek were reward enough.It took us a little over two hours to get to the banks of the lake and there lay one of the most spectacular sights we had ever beheld. A deep turquoise lake surrounded by snow capped mountains and pine trees on the banks. The lake was everything that we expected it to be. As was usual, we spent a little time here taking pics of the lake and its surroundings. It was a surreal place and we tried to take in as much of it as possible and imprint it in our memories forever. Soon, we began the trek back. It took us another two hours and in the forests it got relatively dark quite early. We got back to the parking spot on the road around 4 PM.

We were going to stay at a little village about 40 kms from Lago Sorapis called Via Rizzios. We had told our host to expect us around 8 PM that evening. So we still had a few hours to kill before we had to head to the Airbnb. There were two other lakes in the vicinity that we had planned on seeing. There was enough time to see both before heading to Via Rizzios. We first went to Toblacher see from the parking, which was about 25 kms from there. It was a very pleasant emerald green colored lake surrounded by mountains. It had a nice walking path around it with even a very expensive looking restaurant at one end. After the customary pics, it was on to Pragser Wildsee. It was another short drive of about 20 kms from Toblacher see to Pragser Wildsee. This was an even nicer lake with a beach. It was green in color and the evening sun was out in its golden hues which made the water glisten. On the way back, we decided to stop at the first restaurant we would come across. We did find a restaurant and stopped there. The restaurant had Pasta and we struggled to explain to the Italian speaking waitress that we wanted to have vegetarian Pasta. She was extremely accommodating and understood what we wanted. She told us she could make potato filled penne in butter to which we readily agreed. We ordered a gelato and fries on the side. In a few minutes, she got the Pasta and the sides. It was hands down the most heavenly Pasta we had ever had. The butter and the potato stuffed Penne just melted in the mouth. The gelato and the fries did not disappoint either. It was the best food we had ever had outside of India. On this happy note, we headed to Via Rizzios. It was an 80 km drive from Pragser to Via Rizzios. The drive was very pretty through rural Italy. It took us a couple of hours to get to Via Rizzios which turned out to be a tiny hamlet well off the main road. In fact, we were surprised Google Maps was even able to lead us to the place. With some difficulty we were able to find the house. It turned out the village had 10 houses with a population of 27. The bnb was the first floor of the house with our hosts living on the ground floor. The house was amazing. We had the entire 2 bedroom upstairs to ourselves. The house had a balcony from which you could see the surrounding Dolomites and the Pine trees. It was a little piece of heaven. We were astounded at our luck. Our hostess Letizia turned out to be such a sweet woman trying to make us as comfortable as possible though she could hardly speak a sentence or two of English. Though we were tired, we wanted to enjoy the house we were in. We read for a little while before turning in for the night.


The quaint little village of Idrsko where we stayed the previous night.


Lago Sorapis! The pics just don't do the place justice.


Another one!


Back to our trusty, if underpowered Logan!


Toblacher See!


Pragser Wildsee!

Day 4 (10th June, Saturday): We were so in love with the bnb that we decided to postpone our departure by a few hours so we could enjoy the place and the enormous breakfast our host Letizia had provided us. We had bread, butter, home made honey from the hosts’ bee farm in the backyard, apples, berries, kiwis, cheese, cookies, biscuits, marmalade, muesli, milk, coffee and what not. It takes a while to finish all of this, and finish it we did. We lay down on the comfortable couches in the hall with a book in hand, taking in the views of the surrounding mountains and stuffing our faces with all the aforementioned food. It was a beautiful summer morning and the night’s sleep, combined with the enormous breakfast reinvigorated us. Around 10 AM, we decided we had had enough rest and rejuvenation and set about getting ready to leave. We were loath to leave what we were sure would be the best Airbnb experience of our lives, but were finally out of the house by 10.30 AM. We bid goodbye to our extremely hospitable hosts and embarked on our journey to the Dolomites.

Our destination was the town of Ortisei in the province of Bolzano from where we would take the cable car to Seceda. The drive was an extremely pretty one and though it was only about a 100 kms, it took us a little over 2 hours as it was all through mountain roads. We got to Ortisei at about 12.30 and it took us a further 20 mns inside the town to locate the cable car station, park in the basement and get to the ticket booth. Having purchased the tickets, we got on the cable car which took a further 20 mns to get to the top. At the top, awaited views which would take your breath away. Straight in front of us lay hundreds of acres of green grass and pine trees, at the end of which stood the most majestic mountain range we had ever seen. It was so ridiculous, it looked straight out of a video game world. There were plenty of choices of routes to hike. We figured we could do a 5-6 km hike in about 2-2.5 hrs and chose one from the maps accordingly. The aim was to get as close to the mountain range as was possible. We kept walking towards the mountains and clicking pics along the way. It was a brilliant hike and all the walking made us hungry again. After over an hour’s walk, we decided to sit down on the grass and have lunch. After a quick lunch of khakras, we headed back to the cable car station and its adjoining restaurant. At the restaurant, we decided to reward ourselves with an ice cream each. After guzzling down the ice cream, we got back down to Ortisei and started for our next destination, Obernberger See which was around 90 kms away.

We had been planning to have Pizza before leaving Italy, and we even stopped at a couple of places on the way to see if we could get a Pizza, albeit unsuccessfully. We then drove straight to Obernberger see. The lake was about a 30 minute hike. This was a calm and nice lake where we spent half an hour reading on the grassy banks. We got back to the parking and left for our first night at Innsbruck. It was 45 kms from Obernberger see. Just before we entered Innsbruck, I took over the driving. As we entered Innsbruck, we were looking for the address of our Airbnb. Just a kilometer or so before our Airbnb, at a signal, a school girl riding her bike crashed into the right side rear view mirror. She apologized a hundred times and we just let her go. We were really worried about what the car rental would charge us in case there was damage to the car. Luckily, when we got to our Airbnb and checked, there was no sign of a scratch on the car. Thanking our lucky stars, we went into the house. It was a large independent house where we got a ground floor room next to the kitchen. It was a nice place but the bed was a pull out sofa bed which was not very comfortable but was more than enough for our tired legs. We called it a day early that night after a dinner of microwaved maggi and rajma.


Dolomites, baby!

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Another one!


A picnic lunch with a view!


Bye, bye Dolomites!


Obenbergersee, back to Austria now!


Day 5 (11th June), Sunday: This was the actual beginning of our Austrian leg of the trip. So far, we had seen only Grunersee in Austria. The rest of the time was spent in Slovenia and Italy. The next 4 days were entirely dedicated to exploring Austria. But on this day we would take a quick drive across the Austrian border into Germany to get to the top of the highest peak in Germany, Zugspitze. The train to Zugspitze was from a small station in Germany called Garmisch-Partenkirchen, which was about 65 kms from Innsbruck. It was a pleasant drive and we got there in a little over an hour. We expected the speed limits to be much higher in Germany, given their autobahns, but this stretch of the road had a top speed of 80 kmph. We got to the Garmisch-Parterkrichen parking lot and struggled with the parking machine to get our ticket. When we could not get the machine working with our credit card, we decided to quickly hop into the burger king at the station and get some change to pay cash for the parking. Of course we could not be so ill mannered as to just ask for change at the Burger King. We ended up buying a very nice ice cream and managed to finally pay for the parking. We went in and bought tickets for the Zugspitze ride, which set us back by over a hundred Euros. As we waited for the 9.15 train at the platform, we had a sense of deja vu from our visit to Jungrauoch 3 years prior which did not turn out as well as we expected. There were people yelling obnoxiously in Tamil and Hindi and basically being loud and pushy. No wonder we get a bad name abroad. Thankfully, when the train arrived we managed to avoid some of the ill mannered tourists. We had to change to a cog wheel after an hour and finally reached Zugspitze before 11 AM. From the station, we had to take a massive elevator to the actual observation deck of the peak. The crowds were humongous thanks to it being a sunny Sunday and we jostled with people to get into the elevator. I turn around and see a familiar face in the crowd. It turns out to be a childhood classmate of mine from schools. We both instantly recognised each other and chatted up a little before going our separate ways to explore the peak. With the skies so clear, the views were quite good, but the crowds just put us off a little. The one view which we actually loved was the one that looked down into the lake Eibensee. From that height, in the sunshine, the lake was glowing like an emerald. We shot a couple of pics of this view and made our way back to on the next train.

The next stop in our itinerary was the famous Neuschwanstein castle, which was another hour’s drive from the station. The catch was that the castle would close by 4.30 PM. It was also a 45 minute walk from the parking of the castle to the actual castle gates. We actually would not have much time to explore the castle if we went and anyhow, the castle seemed a little over hyped. So, we decided that we could make better use of the time by going down to the Eibensee lake, which looked stunning from the peak. The lake had plenty of pine covered islands in its midst and there were people picnicking on these islands. We decided to do a boat tour of the lake. It was a very pleasant ride around the lake with a view of the snow capped mountains glowing in the summer sun. It was still only a little after 3 PM. We checked if we could get to see a couple of lakes nearby, but the ones we checked turned out to have multi hour hikes to get to them. So, we decided to take a chill pill that day and get back to Innsbruck and have a quiet dinner downtown. We got back home by 5.30 PM, lazed around for sometime and went to Mama Mia for a pizza. The reviews for the restaurant were great but both the pizza and the garlic bread were pretty ordinary. We walked about the downtown area a little, but there were so many tourists in the city, we quickly went back to the airbnb.


Zugspitze peak!


Lake Eibsee from the Zugspitze peak!


A boat ride on the Eibsee!

Day 6 (12th June, Monday): This was going to be a long driving day with us going west to the Austria-Switzerland border to see the Lunersee lake and then going to Stuibenfalls on the way back from Lunersee. I had found a pic of the lake on reddit and we immediately added it to our itinerary. It was a lake nestled in the Alps between Austria and Switzerland. We got ready for the nearly 200 km drive to the village of Brand from where we had to take the Lunerseebahn to the top of the mountain. The drive from Innsbruck to Brand was a memorable one. Every village in western Austria looks like a painting come to life. Heck, even the views from the freeways was unbelievably enchanting. We took a few videos of our drive through the villages and realized we should have done more of these earlier. As we got closer to Lunersee, the roads were undergoing major repair work and we were diverted off the freeway through narrow mountainous roads. On one such diversion, we got stuck behind a huge trailer for about half an hour with us not being able to overtake the trailer on the narrow winding roads and the trailer being a trailer, not being able to accelerate beyond 40 kmph. We could not really complain though, as the views were a sight to behold and the slow pace allowed us to thoroughly enjoy them.

By around 10 AM, we made it to the village of Brand which looked like an expensive vacation spot for the European rich. At one resort by the road, we saw some old people playing tennis and for a moment I so wanted to join them. From the village, the Lunerseebahn was a further 6kms. We went up what was the main road of Brand and at one point, google maps asked us to take a diversion to a concrete filled road which was barely the width of the car. I thought there must be some mistake and this cannot be the road to the Lunerseebahn. Myy wife urged me to just keep going and we could turn back if we couldn't go on ahead. I was damned if I did. So, I decided we would go back to the village center where we saw some people near the resorts and ask around for directions to Lunserseebahn. We went back a couple of kilometers to the village and luckily some people at the aforementioned resort told us there was no diversion at all and we just had to follow the main road for another few kilometers to get to the Lunerseebahn. So, google maps as usual was stupidly trying to save a few hundred meters in distance. Once again, like on every previous trip I had taken, my common sense in not listening to my wife saved the day. We made the drive up to Lunerseebahn and got to the cable car by around 10.30 AM. There were just about another 10 people for the cable car up the mountain which meant we would have the lake pretty much to ourselves.

The ride up the mountain was a short one and gave us panoramic views of the mountains surrounding the lake with hundreds of small waterfalls gushing down the mountain sides. We got off the cable car and went out to the lake and were quite taken with the view of the lake. The sun was not out yet that day and the lake was sea green in color. The lake was surrounded by snow capped mountains all around and was probably the most picturesque scene we saw in Austria. There was a path around the lake and we started walking along the lake taking in the spectacular views. The circumference would probably have been too much to walk considering we had to get to Stuibenfall too that day. So we walked around for an hour and turned back to our starting point. It was well past noon by the time we made our way back to the cable car station. We still had about 45 mns for the 1.30 PM cable car. We had our lunch of khakras at the cable car station overlooking the lake and came back down by 2 PM.

We started for our next destination, Stuibenfall, which was about a 120 kms away. The drive was pleasant enough till the end where the steep approach roads made our under-powered car go up like a bullock driven cart. We still made decent time and got to the waterfall by 4.30 PM. The waterfall exceeded our expectations. We had not heard too much of Stuibenfall and mainly added it to our itinerary because we had seen videos of people walking across the waterfall hanging on to a metal ladder tied across the waterfall. We were lucky to see an American couple walk across the metal ladder with the help of a guide. It made our palms sweat just watching them and we were absolutely not prepared to do the walk. The waterfall fell from a great height and it had a metal staircase going almost to the bottom of the falls. The waterfall made a racket and huge sprays gushed out of it. At various viewpoints along the stairs, the spray would completely engulf the person standing there. We had fun there in the sprays and were done in about an hour. The day was really perfect as what we thought was a lesser attraction also wildly exceeded our expectations.

It was only an hour and a half from Stuibenfall to Innsbruck and on this day we were changing our airbnb to another house in Innsbruck. We got to this house (owned by our host Franz), which was in a huge apartment block near the center of Innsbruck. It was on the 7th floor and had a private balcony. We freshened up and sat in the balcony which commanded a fantastic view of the Alps. We relaxed and read a little and were out in the balcony till quite late. We also had a great night’s sleep thanks to all the walking and driving that day.


The Lunersee lake, nestled in the Alps between Austria and Switzerland.


The Vorarlberg area leading to the Lunersee. There are about 20 small waterfalls dotting the mountains which you could see if I had a better camera than my iphone 7.

Day 7 (13th June, Tuesday): We started the day in a leisurely fashion. Got ready and left Franz’s place around 8 AM. The drive to Krimml was very beautiful and took us about 2 hours to get there. I remember there was a cow in the middle of the road which blocked us for a couple of minutes, just like what happens at Jeevanbhimanagar main road near my house in Bangalore. We entered the Krimmler national park, for which we had to pay a fee of 10 Euros. We had great views of the Krimml waterfall from afar and took a few pics. We finally got to the parking lot near the entrance to the waterfall. It looked like half of Europe had decided to come to Krimml that day. This was probably the most crowded place we saw on the entire trip. We started the hike to the top of the beautiful waterfall. The hike was relatively steep and there were countless view points at each bend which gave us great views of the waterfall. We snapped a few pics and managed to capture a couple of brilliant rainbows across the waterfall on this very sunny day. We took about an hour and a half to get to within 30 minutes of the top. We got some more breathtaking views of the waterfalls and saw a small tuck shop for tourists there which was selling ice creams. We decided to stop our climb to the top right there and helped ourselves to a couple of brilliant ice creams. We got back down by around 1 PM. On the way down, we saw some people head down a path along the waterfall which ended very close to the base of the waterfall. It was the closest we could get to the water and the roar of the water was deafening. It was a beautiful spot with only a few people around. We took some pics there, which were probably the best of our Krimml trip and finally, we started our drive to Zell am see.

It took us over an hour to get to Zell am see and took us a further 15 mns to find proper parking. The lake was surrounded by hotels and resorts and was also quite crowded. We managed to find parking and walked down to a quiet spot on the banks of the lake. Here, we spent about an hour reading and lazing around. The lake was surrounded by some snow capped mountains and it was a lovely spot to spend some time. After relaxing for a bit, we got back to the car, filled some gas, restocked our food supplies at the gas station and started towards Gosausee.

We got to Gosausee around 5 PM and took a small walk around the lake. The information center there did have a list of nice hikes in the hills surrounding the lake, but the morning’s strenuous hike at Krimml made us opt out of hiking here. We drove on to the much hyped Hallstatt and got there by around 6 PM. The village, which was supposed to be one of the most beautiful in Austria actually turned out to be a total disappointment. It was over run by tourists all over and the lake and its banks were dirty to say the least. It was a major disappointment and we could not wait to get out of there.

We barely spent an hour in Hallstatt and paid the exorbitant parking fee of 6 Euros. We got the hell out of there and made our way to Oberalm to our Airbnb. This was a sleepy little village just on the outskirts of Salzburg and it took us a little bit of time to find the house. We met our hostess Johanna and her 3 kids and she showed us to our room, which was a small extension to the main house. The room was quite small, but very cozy with great views of the surrounding mountains. We tucked in for the night and slept well after a tiring day.


The Krimml roars down into this picturesque valley!


Me marvelling at the force of the Krimml!


The much photographed Hallstat village, very overhyped though!

Day 8, 14th June, Wednesday: We spent this entire day visited the ice caves in the Salzburg area. It was a sight to behold and the tour guide was quite knowledgeable. After this, we visited the Werfen castle and quite a few lakes in and around the Salzburg area. It was quite leisurely. At each place, we took out our kindles and read for an hour or so before moving on to the next lake. It was an idyllic day after the hectic schedule of the previous week. We ended the day at the house of an Englishman settled in settled in the cute Austrian town of Mondsee. We discussed some cricket with him after which we headed out to the town, taking in the surroundings. We settled down and mentally prepared ourselves for the drive back to Vienna in the morning.


The Fuschlsee. Spent an hour here reading my kindle


The Werfen castle, photographs pretty well I think

[blackwasp]

Originally Posted by sup?

We finally settled on a road trip through Austria, Slovenia, and the Dolomites region of northern Italy as our destination. The convenience of Schengen and the road network in these countries meant that our trip through multiple countries would be hassle free.

Awesome report there. Great to see people going on off-beat destinations. Schengen is a great idea, making cross border travel easy.

Without further ado, let me take you through our 9 day trip to these places with a day by day write up followed by pictures for that day.

The pictures are just breath taking. Looks like a visual illustration rather than a photo. I'm sure in person it would have been even more special. Once again, thanks for sharing. Looking forward to more such reports.

[sup?]

Originally Posted by blackwasp

Awesome report there. Great to see people going on off-beat destinations. Schengen is a great idea, making cross border travel easy.


The pictures are just breath taking. Looks like a visual illustration rather than a photo. I'm sure in person it would have been even more special. Once again, thanks for sharing. Looking forward to more such reports.

Schengen is such a blessing especially for people like us with Indian passports. Each time we get a Schengen, we submit a kilo of paper documents each for my wife and I. Imagine doing that for 2-3 countries every time you want to go on a trip through Europe.

The pics just don't do the places any justice. Northern Italy and Slovenia are a sight to behold. I can't think of too many places except Iceland that can beat the natural beauty of this area.

[ampere]

Its just too many places around Austria to explore and form a one perfect plan! Whether its west of Innsbruck or south or Salzburg or look at Slovenia/Italian border or drive the high High Alpine road at Grossglockner!

But whatever be the plan, you can never go wrong! Awesome places.