Eddie goes to Austria

This past weekend Dan and I went back into Austria. We took Eddie with us and crated him when we weren't at the hotel, he did so great. We also took Shae (my dog) but she always comes with us and she does great as well. We stayed in Fusch, which is just down the road from the Grossglockner Highway (Rated one of Europe's greatest drives) and about 15 minutes from Zell am See. Our Hotel was nice, all the hotels we have stayed in have been nice, but this one had a lot more space in the room than the others one did. Right across the street there were mountains and a waterfall. We of course kept our windows open and you could hear the waterfall in our room. The weather up there was great, in Fusch and Sell am See the highs were in the 50's and when we went up into the mountains more it was in the 30's.

Our Hotel


The first day we were there we drove around and went to a town called Bad Gastein. It was about 30 minutes from the hotel and this town was known as a spa town. There are natural springs here and a great waterfall right in the center of town. The water contains radon and is said to have healing powers for things such as arthritis. It had some shops and restaurants of course, it was nice because the town sits up in the mountain. I bet that place is packed in the winter!

Here is the town of Bad Gastein



The Waterfall in Bad Gastein



After Bad Gastein we drove into Zell am See, ate lunch and went and explored the downtown area and the lake. It's a quiet little town, we really enjoyed it.

Zell am See Lake



After Zell am See we went to Krimmler waterfall. This is supposed to be the highest waterfall in Europe. It consists of 3 parts, from the road you can only see one part of it. We hiked up for about an hour and still could only see the bottom third of the waterfall and decided to head back down. It was a hike all uphill, Dan said we were going to be doing a lot of walking the next day too, so we decided to head down and go back to the hotel since it was getting close to dinner time.

Krimmler Waterfall



The next day we bought our ticket for the Grossglockner Highway through our hotel and got it for a discounted price of 25 euro. This toll road was literally only 3 minutes down the road from our hotel. We hadn't seen any snow on the mountains at all in the first day driving around the area, but 2 minutes down this road and around the mountains we saw the snow and the big, gorgeous peaks of the alps. We drove through taking a lot of great pictures and saw some glaciers on the side of the mountain when we first started the drive. We got out, enjoyed the fresh, cold air and waited for the sky to clear up a bit. When we first started it was pretty cloudy out, so you couldn't even see all the mountain peaks. We saw that is started clearing up, so we decided to stop, take our time and enjoy every minute of it. Here is a picture when we first got onto the toll road.



Throughout the drive we saw lots of cows (all wearing cowing bells), a lot of old and really expensive cars, tons of waterfalls and the most beautiful scenery that I have ever seen. We continued down the road and it dead ends to where you can get out and see the highest mountain in the Austrian Alps, The Grossglockner. This is where you can also see Austria's largest glacier of 7km, right at the base of Grossglockner. Here is a view from the top, the highest peak is Grossglockner.



We took a tram down half of the mountain we were on and walked the rest of the way down to the base of the glacier. I knew going down was the easy part, coming back up was going to be something else, but I didn't mind because I knew it was totally worth it :) While walking down there were signs with years on them telling you that the glacier was at that spot in that year. When we first got off the tram there was a sign saying 1965. It took us about 30 minutes to walk down to the glacier where we met the 2010 sign. We walked out on the glacier, they had this ladder type thing that they had laid down on the ice to walk on and a few areas that were roped off. We walked to the end of the roped area and saw a sign of a person going down a crevice head first and another sign that said enter at your own risk with an opening in the rope. We figured if it was really that dangerous they wouldn't have had the rope open, so we of course, went going. There were people behind us, but they stopped at the end of the rope and that's the furthest they went. I wanted to keep going to get closer to the glaciers at the top, but not one other person was out there besides us, so we just took some pictures and took in the beauty.

This picture is when we finally got down to the glacier. It starts up in the Mountain and comes down to the bottom of the picture


Here is the picture I was talking about at the end of the rope with the opening to go further




Cracks in the Glacier



Close up of the glacier



Dan on the Glacier



Myself on the Glacier



We had a wonderful time, will definitely be going back there at some point :) I have a lot more pictures posted on Facebook, if you would like me to email you the link if you are not on Facebook just let me know :)