Sunday Escapades

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Austria

Shannen

Friday 24th December 2021

This trip was so up in the air we weren’t even sure it was possible with Austria going into lockdown for two weeks at the end of November and the Omicron cases in London skyrocketing. Not to mention I came down with the top 5 symptoms of Omicron the weekend before we were scheduled to leave and many of my nursing colleagues had covid for the second time around despite being triple jabbed. We left everything super last minute because of all this uncertainty and spend the couple of evening before we left staying up late booking trains and accommodation.  Thankfully the universe aligned for us as it usually does and my PCR came back negative and Austria opened up to vaccinated travellers. You had to have the booster and your two other jabs to get straight into the country without a PCR test so we got Lew boostered this week since it was the cheapest option!

We had flights into Vienna but since it was Xmas eve and we knew nothing would be open in the city we decided to train 4 hours and 40 minutes across to the ski town of Innsbruck. It was a seriously long day of travelling especially having to wear an FFP2 mask all day but all went super smoothly aside from arriving in Innsbruck and literally nothing was open. We wandered around looking for an open supermarket so we could make some dinner. Nothing. What we didn’t realise was the Austrians celebrate xmas on the evening of the 24th, hence why everything was closed. Thankfully I had made a meal and we had also stocked up on a lot of food from Pret before we left London. It didn’t look like the supermarkets were open until Monday though and it was Friday night! Out airbnb was super cute and everything we needed for our time here. It was a short walk into town, had cooking facilities and was warm! The plan was to try and get some hire ski gear tomorrow and ski since nothing will be open on Xmas Day aside from the ski fields. We spent a bit of time calling home since it was Xmas day in NZ and Xmas alone certainly isnt the same as Xmas with your loved ones.


Saturday 25th December

Merry Xmas! Well this is certainly different to what we were doing Xmas Day last year. We had basically nothing except a protein bar so we ate that and wandered into town to the ski hire shop Die Boerse which was open. We got kitted out with some gear including goggles, helmet, gloves and pants for me which cost €106 ($177.50 nzd) for one day. It was about 10am at this stage and after discussing with the locals where to go we decided to make our way up to one of the 13 local fields called Aximer Lizum which is 40 minutes by bus. One of the local men from the ski shop drove us back to the apartment where we had 5 minutes to throw our gear in a bag before he dropped us off to the bus stop for the 10:40 bus to the field. We were absolutely starving at this stage and hoped there was something open on the mountain! The buses are all free with the “welcome pass” which you get from the large hotels, not the airbnb we were in but the locals said no one ever checks the pass and if you have skis with you they won’t question you. How easy is that! A bus literally took us to the bottom of the lifts. We found an open restaurant on the field and had a couple of veggie burgers, some mulled wine and a hot chocolate for our xmas brunch. Aimer Lizum was where the Winter Olympics were held in 1964 and 1976 and the resort even has a funicular that went to the top on. Super cool and I wish we had such a thing at home! The tickets are sold by the hour so it didn’t matter that it was 1pm when we finally got ourselves ready to ski. Austria has made it compulsory to wear FFP2 masks instead of the general surgical mask so trying to get that on as well as your ski gear is quite the faff. We also had to prove our ‘2G’ status which is basically your covid pass. I don’t understand why anyone would not get vaccinated, your life is going to be SO complicated to do anything from skiing outside to eating inside at a restaurant or even taking public transport.

The actual skiing was average. The mountains surrounding the field were gorgeous but the snow itself was lacking a little and there wasn’t many runs open that kept us entertained. But we were just thankful and amazed that we had even made it up here and got some food. At the end of the day we took the bus back down and returned our skis to the shop as the weather wasn’t looking so good for the Sunday. The girl at the shop gave us loads of local recommendations for vegan food and even told us the supermarket at the main train station was open - thank goodness! We traipsed there afterwards and did a big shop for dinner and also for breakfast the next few days. We made veggie wraps for dinner and Lew also brought some Manner chocolate pudding for dessert. He heated it up in the microwave and gave me one. I asked him whether this wasn’t just chocolate icing and sure enough when we translated it to English it most certainly was. So xmas dessert was fruit with this drizzled over top. Whoops, clearly German isn’t our strong suit!

Sunday 26th December 

We had a really relaxed morning sleeping in and reading our books which we were in serious need of after the craziness of the last week. At lunchtime we decided to go and explore the city and some local sights.

Nordkette

Nordkette is part of Austria’s largest nature park, the Karwendel Nature Park, and can be reached directly from Innsbruck city centre by taking a series of cable cars and funiculars. It stops at multiple points where you can admire the view or stop for some food before you reach the highest point at 2300m at Hafelekar. It gave us such a gorgeous panorama of Innsbruck itself as well as the surrounding Tyrol mountain range. We grabbed some mulled wine and soup at the midway point which is also a ski slope! Every stop had the most fascinating looking station which was actually designed by Zaha Hadid a famous London based architect. 

The city of Innsbruck

Probably one of the most gorgeous cities we have been to in the winter. Everything was still pretty closed down with it being a holiday weekend but the buildings are absolutely stunning. The have such intricate details on the outside of them and the bright colours with the backdrop of the snowy mountains is just gorgeous. I really think this is one of the best winter destinations in Europe and I adore how they embrace the cold, dark seasons so much better than London does. Having the ability to get into the mountains during winter makes life lot more enjoyable thats for sure! We will hopefully we around on Tuesday to pop in and out of the shops when they are open again. We did however go back to the ski rental place to organise some skis for tomorrow since we knew Monday was the best day weather wise

Tonight for dinner we made some homemade falafel and called it a night early snuggling in to watch Emily in Paris 

Monday 27th December

St Anton

We hadn’t actually planned to go here until we overheard thats where a big group of 12 kiwis were going at the ski rental shop. We decided to have a look on the map and see whether it was possible. It is the 5th largest ski field in the world and the largest in Austria. It is about an hour long train to get to the town of St Anton from Innsbruck and then a short walk across town to the bottom of the lifts. Easy peasy that’s for sure. We grabbed some day passes, linked our covid green pass proving our vaccination status to our ski passes and headed up the huge gondola at the bottom. We passed through a mid station where we went onto another gondola to the top. I kid you not this field which is all together called St Arlburg has 97 gondolas. You can see why I said this field was huge, I don’t think a single ski field in NZ has even a single gondola. We had no idea where to start so ended up down a black run which wasn’t so bad and had a dusting of powder. The rest of the day it honesty was so icy it was more like a dangerous bob sled track. We searched and searched for any sort of snow to be left on the mountain but it really had been skied out. We headed over to a cute small township called Zurs where at the top gondola we decided to stop for lunch at a BBQ restaurant. Not a great choice for a couple of vegetarians but they did do a veggie burger and the view was incredible from here. We also added a mulled wine and hot chocolate to spoil ourselves before getting back out onto the slopes and skiing until the last lift closed at 4pm. It was a struggle though as the snow was just that terrible. 

We had a train leaving at 5pm so we took the time to look around the small city attached to the field. After all the Apres ski is the most important part to check out if we ever plan to come back this way. There were so many ski shops and one advertising Patagonia called ‘Sport Pete’ caught our eye. We had a great chat to the man himself and turned out he had the Patagonia women’s ski pants to match my jacket in both the lined and unlined models - both of which we had been unable to find hence me needing to hire some! We decided to just go ahead and get them then and there as we love clothing that has a story and we also knew that with the lined pants from last season we were unlikely to find them in stock anywhere else. These will be my ski pants for life! As we left Petes we had a bit of time to head across to the station but I realised we hadn’t dropped our lift passes back and got our €10 ($16.80 nzd) back for doing so! I ran as fast as I could in ski boots to do this and we ended up with 5 minutes to spare before the train rolled into the station. That was lucky as the trains come hourly at this time of night.

We decided on the way home there was no point in skiing tomorrow as the snow is unlikely to be great anywhere else either so we went to the shop to return our gear. They were unfortunately closed to we had to cart it all home on the bus with us and planned on returning it early in the morning. The lovely lady who looked after us at the Ski shop - Olivia, recommended we head to a Nepalese place called ‘Himal’ for dinner as they have loads of vegan options. So we cleaned ourselves up, put some nice clothes on and walked into town for dinner. It absolutely did not disappoint and I highly recommend checking it out if your in town!

Tuesday 28th December

With it not being a skiing day we had a pretty free day with no plans. We did get up early and return our gear to the shop with no issues at all before coming home and making some breakfast. Today is our last day in Innsbruck so we planned on checking out some of the shops downtown as they have all been closed until today. We didn’t actually leave the house until 1pm and we found some really interesting documentaries on fast fashion and also the colbolt industry which is used to make batteries. Very interesting stuff and made me really consider what I was shopping for! We grabbed some lunch on our way out at a place called ‘Swing Kitchen’ which is a vegan fast food joint and then wandered the small streets. There was the cutest store called ‘Feinheiten’ where I brought these adorable stamps from and then next door there was a lovely childrens store called ‘Kinderreich’ I may have fallen in love with the cutest little organic cotton onesie for a newborn and purchased it for our future kiddies. Grey of course so it doesn’t matter if its a boy or girl. I had to lie to the lady in the shop that it was a friend as I felt so stupid! We popped our heads into the many many mountain stores before going past the market hall to grab some dinner. We found some fresh gnocchi and some vegan sauce from a company called ‘Gourmet Campaigne’ which was beyond tasty! We did a loop of the streets but the cold winter air was starting to become unbearable and we headed home for the evening. We made some dinner & then chatted to Pat our Colorado muma for a good 3 hours as it had been likely over 6 months since we last spoke!

Wednesday 29th December

Onwards to Salzburg!

We had a 2 hour train to get us there which was beyond easy in comparison to having a car. We spent the time reading, listening to podcasts or researching what to do in our next city. It really is a great way to travel Europe. We arrived in Salzburg central and found a cute place for lunch called “My Indigo”. We spent a good 3 hours here as it was so cozy and we were scouting out potential places to live back in Christchurch, NZ. We know it’s going to be an absolute minefield and very difficult when we get home as we want to live within the four avenues of the central city. Mostly so we can walk and bike everywhere like we do in London although currently the public transport in Christchurch is so terrible that everyone basically has to have a car. Lew had been doing some research on the cycle ways going into the city so we were looking at areas where we could be close to these so we can get to both parents houses with the kids in a cargo bike. Anyways watch this space its only the beginning of our planning!

We were both pretty tired so we took the bus 20 minutes out to our Airbnb at a place called ‘Pension Ballwein’. It very much smelt like cows out here and fresh Austrian air. Our place was absolutely gorgeous with loads of space and a full kitchen. We chilled here before walking 20 minutes to the supermarket to grab some breakfast, dinner and snack for our time here. It was a pretty mild evening and we enjoyed the walk! We snuggled up early after dinner to research what to do in Salzburg tomorrow and to look into the Sound of Music as it is the reason many people come here although neither of us know anything about it.

Thursday 30th December 


We started the day with a super relaxed morning as the sun doesn’t come up until about 8.30am. Plus today it was absolutely pouring down outside and it wasn’t exactly exciting to get out there and see Salzburg.

At 1pm the rain had eased slightly and we waited for the bus just outside of our accommodation which takes you directly into town. I had noted down some of the most important things to do in the city. The Old town is called Getreidegasse which is where we wandered around looking in some of the local shops to hide from the rain. It was bone chillingly cold today and the rain just made it feel even more unpleasant! We wandered around the mountains on the Hohensalzburg Fortress deciding to do this on the 1st of Jan since it is a public holiday and I doubted much else would be open. Salzburg is also famous because this is where Mozart was born in 1756 right in the heart of old town. The big bright yellow residence is now home to a museum as well as a supermarket down below selling all sorts of Mozart related things. 

To get a break from the rain we found a Vietnamese lunch place called ‘Uncle Vans’ where we had pho and crazy noodles. There wasn’t much open in town at all and frequently we would walk to a place which Google would say is open yet we would find it very much closed up for the holiday season. After lunch the sun was starting to go down but we went via the Mirabell Palace and Gardens which is free entry and typically in the spring and summer would be overflowing with beautiful flowers and a view up to the fortress. 

Spending a day in the city:

Friday 31st  December

The final day of 2021!!

Today we had a big day trip on our hands. We wanted to get to the small, picturesque town of Hallstatt which has been on my Pinterest board for awhile now. 

I had read it was better to get a rental car if you can because you can explore the beautiful Lakes District around the area but there is an option for a bus and a train. For once it is actually cheaper, faster and more recommended to take Bus 150 from Salzburg main train station which takes about 1.5 hours to get to Bad Ischl train station. Then you catch the train to Hallstatt station which is very well sign posted and majority of people will also be taking this route! 

Some little side notes if your doing this trip - bus 150 doesn’t have a toilet onboard despite the long ride! But the train station at Salzburg does (you have to pay 50c) and then the station at Bad Ischl has a free toilet as well as the train to Hallstatt. Honestly this is crucial info for Europe, I always hate paying to pee. 

We had picked the most stunning sunny day leaving Salzburg but as we entered the Lakes District in the bus the thick fog covered every inch of the valley and it was exactly the same as we hopped off the train at Hallstatt station. Now your journey is not over here,. In order to get across to the town you came all this way to see you need to take a boat across the lake which costs €12 for two people return, anytime and they take cash only. The boat ride itself only takes about 5 minutes across the lake and thankfully for us the fog cleared slightly so Hallsattt came into view as we edged closed to its dock. It almost had a spooky feeling with thick clouds hovering above it. There is no doubt at all that its is a very pretty city. It is absolutely tiny but the main town square has gorgeous decorated houses with wood piled up outside the front of it and hot fires roaring. People stood outside drinking punch and mulled wine. As we came in by boat it was quite easy to see where the best spot to get that insta worthy shot looking back over the city was as there was a lot of people hanging out there. It must be frustrating for the locals but equally the winter time isn’t the busy period so I cant even imagine what its like in summer. I have heard it is better to stay overnight to avoid the crowds. We wandered up behind the town so we could get some beautiful shots of it looking down over the water before we to went to the corner with the best view. 

Now guys im not going to lie you can absolutely tell this place is over run by tourists. Yes its lovely and it was nice to visit it but there are certain towns you can just tell tourism has ruined it. We struggled big time to find somewhere decent to eat, especially food that is vegan friendly. It was also absolutely beyond freezing with no sunshine in the city due to the high mountains. The water surrounding it was incredibly clear and all together Lew and I rated it a 7/10. We were back on the boat probably 1.5 hours later to make the journey back to Salzburg. It was a much faster visit that I was certainly expecting.

Since it was New Years Eve and we hadn’t eaten anything but snacks all day were decided to treat ourselves to some dinner out! Once again there was a lot closed but we came across a fabulous Indian place called the ‘Taj Mahal’ which did very tasty vegan meals. It was lovely to finally defrost, eat loads of tasty food and chat about our goals and plans for 2022.

Neither of us made it to midnight as it was far too cold waiting around for 12pm to come about so we headed back to our Airbnb and snuggled in. Who knows where we will be for New Years next year. New Zealand hopefully! 

1st January 2022

The bright sunshine streamed through the shutters welcoming the New Year. It was going to be another gorgeous day in Salzburg and our final day in Austria. Instead of taking the bus into town we walked all the way with the warmth of the sunshine on our backs. There is a cool walking trail called Kapuzinerberg trail which winds you 4km up and around the hill within the city and I highly recommend taking some time to do this walk as it gives you wonderful views over the city across the river. It was about 12 degrees so an absolute treat. This took us a couple of hours before we made our way back into the city and came across a veggie/vegan cafe called ‘Heart of Joy’ which was thankfully open. I had the daily curry which was eggplant and pumpkin and Lew had their house sandwich on sourdough. 

After lunch we raced to the train station to grab some food for dinner and snacks for tomorrows 7 hour train journey to Cologne before fast walking across town to the fortress. 

Hohensalzburg Fortress 

We were a little on the fence as to whether this was worth doing seeing as we have done a lot of similar castles and fortresses. But we had read that it was almost criminal to not do it if your a tourist in the city as it is the biggest fully preserved castle in Central Europe. There is a funicular you can take to get up but I would say its not worth paying for it as the walk really isn’t that bad (unless of course you have mobility issues). We brought the all inclusive ticket which did give us a lift down the funicular.

Building on the fortress began in 1077 and from then had a series of many additions to make it into the structure it is now by multiple archbishops. The fortress has never been captured by foreign troops even to this day and the locals are very proud of this. 

Our favourite area of the museum was the Princely Chambers which were decorated very differently to that of anything else we have seen. There was incredible stone columns that had been carved into beautiful helixes and the ceiling was decorated. Make sure you have this added into your ticket as you can buy the basic ticket that excludes this area.

That called it a day! We took a train back to our Airbnb where we watched “Look Up” and cooked veggie nachos for dinner. I also prepped a falafel salad for our long train journey tomorrow and begun to pack everything up as we had a 7.15am train form the central station.

2nd January 2022

It was a 5.30am wake up call to be ready for the 6.21am bus that came past the house. This got us into Salzburg main train station with plenty of time. We had to first take a train to Munich which took 2 hours before then taking a train to Cologne which was 4 hours. Honestly driving this far would feel super long but because your in a train you can walk around, eat, listen to a podcast or watch some Netflix and also get up to pee as often as you like. Not to mention the train is going between 200-300km/hr! The train was beyond packed and people had to stand in the isles on the way to Cologne. No one ever checked our tickets nor did they check our covid pass or reason to enter into Germany. This was very much as we were expecting because Europes borders are so free flowing. We arrived into Cologne and went instantly to find somewhere to store the suitcase so we could see a bit of the city and find some dinner before we went to the airport hotel. The bag drop off in the main station is actually really good. Its an automatic system where you shove everything you want into a metal container and it shuts an automatic door and it rearranges it in the storage box for the next empty container for the next person. We then wandered past the large cathedral down through the remaining xmas markets which were very cute, had loads of food and also had an ice rink people were skating around on. Some friends ours came to this market at the end of last year when we went to Strasbourg and highly recommended it. So add it to your Xmas market list! We carried on to the water front before heading to the Belgium inspired area of the city to find some food. With the weather being so nice it was lovely to be outside. This is a very hipster area with lots of good shops as well so I recommend coming here. It did appear that loads was closed so when we came across a fries shop called ‘Frittenwerks” open that did Vegan French fries we sat down for a snack. Walking up a street there was a cute Vietnamese place open called ‘Lua by Danny” and we decided to just grab dinner from there straight after. The food was fantastic! They did such tasty vegan food it was perfect and really cheap also as they were cash only. We then headed back to the central station, grabbed our bags and then took the train out to the airport to the Moxy where we were staying overnight. It just started to pour down with rain as we hopped on the train so we timed it perfectly. The Moxy was brand new and actually the nicest accommodation at an Airport we had ever stayed at. Highly recommend it. Plus the early flight in the morning would be easy since its 5 minutes walk to the check in desk.

Monday 3rd Jan 2022

A easy wake up call and a wander across to the airport to the Eurowings check in desk to us all of 5 minutes. Thankfully we had paid for a checked bag as we had heaps of luggage shoved into it and I have no idea how we managed to get it all here in the first place. Eurowings was actually very particular about how much you took on board and were checking everyone had one item. We had Lews helmet as an extra and I ended up hiding it underneath my puffy jacket to get it on the plane. Border control was the part we were most worried about because technically we couldn’t really be in Germany as they have blocked the UK from travelling there with the Omicron variant being so bad right now. However because we were transiting through and because we had spent almost 10 days in Austria it was ok. They just spent about 5 minutes trying to find my stamp from Vienna when we came in on the 24th Dec and were a little confused at how many stamps were in my passport - the usual issue from a very well travelled Kiwi. But we got through totally fine and also managed to get all our belongings onto the plane. It was really strange but they had 3 police officers standing watching us all board the plane. We had no idea why but it was very much scare mongering and unnecessary. Flying into Heathrow we took the train to Paddington and then the underground to Waterloo to pick up our covid swabs from Randox. We did them then and there sending them off in the postage box to hopefully get a result later in the day as technically we have to isolate until these come back. Stupid since the UK has about 200,000 new covid cases a day - highest ever recorded throughout the pandemic all because of omnicron and the rest of Europe is in a far better state than here yet we have to isolate and pay for expensive tests. That was the trip done! It was lovely being home but also we had very much enjoyed being away in the fresh air and sunshine. Our next trip at this stage is in Rome and also France for a ski trip in March!