Austria - eins

Here follows lots and lots of photos (four posts' worth) of our wonderful family holiday to Austria.....rather later than I intended to publish, but I don't want to skip past these brilliant two weeks....

Our holiday was in Zell am See a ski resort in Austria.  We stayed in a chalet up a very steep hill surrounded by trees and blue skies.....what could be better?

In the first few days of being there, I got drawn into the doubtfully brilliant idea of hubby's to climb up the ski lanes next to our chalet.  We left littlest boy home with my in-laws and off we set.

I wonder now, looking back on all of this, why I was persuaded that this was a good idea......I mean, they are ski runs....which in the very nature of ski runs are..... steep!  Here was where we started, and somehow the photos make it look like a walk in the park......which it wasn't!

I did a fair bit of resting, (saying  'the boys could probably do with a break'!) and each time I would look across at the hill opposite to gauge how high up we had got from the last stop.  A few areas it was impossible to sit, as your bottom would slide down the bank.

Here you could see the town's  lake just showing through the trees.

This was one of those walks where I kept thinking I could see the top, only to find that it went round another corner.....I would shout ahead to my annoyingly fit husband who would just say, 'yeah, this is it I think!'....yeah right.....

When we finally got as far as we were going to go (not quite the tippy-top) the views were worth the effort.

Another gloriously hot day was spent in the town's outdoor swimming pool and lake.  I spent a while watching littlest boy running in and out of the showers.

During our stay my mother-in-law and I took it in turns to cook for us all, but one evening we took a night off after spotting an an 'all you can eat' sign....I'm not sure what they thought the offer of unlimited chicken wings and chips meant, but maybe they hadn't taken my family in to consideration.....we ate well, much to the surprise of the restaurant.

Each day we loaded up our backpacks with picnic food, drinks, put on our thick socks and walking boots and set off on a new adventure.  One thing that always amused me was how big our bags of crisps became, from buying them in the town to opening them at the top of a mountain.

The lake at Zell am See