Austria - zwei

In the second week we took a journey to Salzburg outskirts to the Grossglockner High Alpine Road.

This is real Top Gear ground with hairpin bends, climbing roads and spectacular views.  There were lots of motorbikes and more than a few nutters on bicycles!  We stopped to talk to one German cyclist who said this was his third adventure on the roads, this time with a proper light weight road bike, not like the clumpy old mountain bike he had used twenty years before.  The endorphins were obviously rushing around as he was a very smiley man!

This was a photo taken at the highest point on the road at 2571m.  (This was a moment I was glad to be the quiet wife as my hubby managed to fit our car into the tiniest space in a very busy car park so I could take a photo for my blog!)

Heart- shaped snow!

We travelled on to the Kaiser-Franz-Josefs-Hohe Visitor Centre, where you park up and get to see Austria's biggest mountain the Grossglockner 3798m with its impressive glacier.

From the top here, where the boys are standing, you can see what look like ants dotted about, only to realise they are of course people.

With the enthusiasm of very ignorant tourists we set off along the very rough and rocky paths down to the glacier.

After lots of walking, tripping, sliding we got to the bottom of the path and stopped for a breather to look at the spectacular glacier.....Hubby was feeling very disappointed that walking further was going to be too much for all of us, but after saying well lets try a bit more, we ventured down onto the glacier.

Foolish probably looking back, but what an experience...truly awe inspiring, one of those never forget moments.  The walk back up was one of those too....it was gruelling, I was near tears, the boys did all have their moments too...but somehow we all got back to the top in relative sanity

One thing that was just amazing were the stones...I've always been a stone collector, but these were off the scale....just like lumps of silver, sparkly and beautiful, if I hadn't had to carry everything back up the paths I would have brought home a truckload!

Another day was spent visiting the Krimml waterfalls, with 380m of fall, they are the fifth biggest waterfalls in the world.

I took photo upon photo, but nothing captured the magnitude of the falls

This is us at the highest point at 1470m...smiles here, but they only appeared when we reached the top. Littlest, at only four, did extremely well, there were a fair few adults....no most adults fell by the wayside on the climb up.

Despite the day starting out rainy and grey, the views from the top were wonderful

This is the last drop photographed from the bottom of the falls... and the ice cream featured in middle boy's hands may have been part of a bribe  reward for doing the walk.