Salzburg, Austria

I'm blogging from the balcony of our zimmer(room). We found a private house with one room to rent. It is great--has a fridge and this balcony where you can see the alps in the distance. We're in a little town called Anif. Very quiet here--nice. We're going shopping shortly and then driving into Salzburg to get the lay of the land. We're buying a Salzburg Card that gives us free bus and sight admissions all around Salzburg. Tomorrow is tour day. Hope the weather holds. It was raining when we left Unterach this morning--sunny, now. No pictures today. Maybe some tomorrow night.

Hallstadt, Austria--Salt Country

Had breakfast at the pension and then headed to Hallstadt--about 50 km. Another very old town on a huge lake. We walked around town, shopped and watched people until about noon. We went into a very old Catholic church (picture attached--this one is for Maggie and 'Roland) Beautiful church. We then went for lunch--had hot dogs served with a round dinner roll and no silverware. I asked for a knife and he said no, no, you hold hot dog in one hand and the roll in another. You dip the dog in mustard and eat!!! Very tasty. Drove back to Unterach and then drove around all of Attersee. It was another 50 km--but a beautiful drive right by the water. Very expensive homes. Today was a holiday for this region and there were people everywhere enjoying the hot day. Many motorcycles and bicycles on the road--biking is very big here. They love the windy, mountain roads. The owner of the restaurant has been so kind as to let us use his wireless internet. He has a webcam: http://www.unterach.com/ Shows the beautiful scenery in Unterach. Great guy. His customers love watching us talk to our kids over Skype. We just had a wonderful meal-shiskabob, with pork tenderloin, green pepper,onion and bacon sprinkled with paprika, salt and pepper dipped in a sauce of ketchup, curry and onion. Delicious. More tomorrow from Saltzburg.

Web address

I neglected to give you the live webcam address of the place we used the internet today in Weyregg, Austria. Here it is!!:

http://217.16.116.45:8081

Boat Ride on the Attersee

Couldn't have asked for a better day--had to be 80 degrees, not a cloud in the sky. We went part way up the lake and got off at Weg . We walked to the grocery store (we do that a lot) and bought lunch, found a park by the water to eat and then walked back to town to find an internet cafe. We talked to John through Skype from the Eichhorn Cafe (http://www.cafe.eichhorn.at/) The owners of the cafe and their son could not believe that we were talking to Florida--had to show John their dog through the webcam. Last night it was Jen in Michigan while she was at work and then the day before that we were able to talk to Jeff for a while. Computers are great!!! We met a couple from Stuttgart, Germany on the boat, Alfred and Gemunde. They didn't speak English and we don't speak German--but we had a great time playing charades, guessing what we each were saying. Tomorrow, we're off to Haltstatt and another lake. We do love the water.

Salzkammergut, Austria

It's a mouthful, huh? We're in the lake region near Salzburg, today. We came close to Salzburg and decided to pass it up and head back there on our way to Germany. We decided to stay here and study up on the area . We are in a little town called Unterach--about 1,500 people. It lies right on Attersee, the biggest lake of the area. There are 7 huge lakes that are very clear and very deep. Tomorrow we're taking a 2 1/2 hour boat ride. Fifi brought us here through farm county--rolling hills and great forests--awesome ride. One thing that we've notice a lot of are the tunnels through the mountains. There are lots of them--through all the countries--some short and some very, very long. The roads in Europe are excellent--well maintained.

4 cents from jim------we have been trying to call our skype list but nobody seems to up at 2 in the morning we will have to work harder to set up times---it seems that the countries are getting better as we go---austria is the best so far---we could live here----looking for a good fixer uper---tomorrow is a big day--not just a weekly review but the first monthly budget review--going to be grumpy for a few days---great people here in this town--we will know most by the time we leave-----the owner of the resturant we are having dinner at said we can come back anytime to use the internet and not even have to buy anything!!!my kind of town----the beer is great--think that they get it from germany--auf wiedersehen--jim

A walk in the park!!

We had another great day!! We had a good breakfast, provided by the hotel. We went on a 2 hour walk on the Wasser Strasse. This town has walking trails everywhere. One in particular goes right by our hotel. We followed a stream with waterfalls along the way. It was a gentle, easy walk with in the woods, too. We found a fixer-upper for Jim--photo attached. Amazing that neither one of us fell! We bought lunch at the grocery store and once again stumbled onto a walking trail by the river with a park bench. Sun was shining and the view was amazing. After lunch, we headed to the FelsenTherme--a thermal, mineral spa with hot water deep from the mountain. They have 5 different pools and we tried them all--spent 3 hours there. We're now at a restaurant having pizza and using their Internet. Tomorrow we're headed for the Salzburg area--not sure of an Internet connection, so if you don't hear from us you'll know we're out of reach.

More pics

I apologize for the duplicate pictures in the last post. I had a hard time with them again. The computer kept bumping me out after I had them loaded--then couldn't remember which ones were saved. Brother. Anyway here are some more.

Badgastein, Austria

We arrived in Austria yesterday. Had a beautiful ride through the Dolomite Mountains--once again, up very high. I've attached a couple pictures of that ride. We were using Fifi and all of a sudden she said "in 50 km turn right and board the car ferry." We said, "What?"!!!! She took us the shortest route which was a tunnel that a train used to go through the mountain instead of around. I included a picture of the train. Today, we traveled to the Austrian Alps and drove the Grosslockner Strasse. An amazing 46 Kilometer ride. We made it to the top of the highest peak in Austria. It was 2500 meters up the mountains. Snow, snow, snow. And we were in our shirt sleeve most of the time. We thank Ken Gertz for this travel trip on the Strasse. It was a wonderful day, Ken, thanks. Looking forward to your plans for unsJulyTomorrow, we are doing laundry, walking the trails around Badgastein, and going to the thermal mineral pool for a while. This is truly lovely scenery, people are very friendly and helpful. Trying to remember some German from college. Sarah from Genisys came through with our debit card and it's working well. All we need now is donations from people to put more back in the account~!~~ Any takers??? I'm posting more pictures without text. There is just so much to show and say!!!!