September 4-5
Written September 5-6 and Oct 5
Dear Diary,
OK,
we're on the road again. Packing was straightforward enough:
clothes and "other". For John, the other is camera and computer
gear. For Marianne, the other includes an iPad, sketching
material, and all the trip planning material. And then we squeeze
in several little things in the nooks and crannies left over.
When the trunks are full, it's time to leave.
The
drive down was only as long as we prefer: four hours, with stops.
Most of this was normal German autobahns, not particularly fun since
traffic was frequently interrupted by summer road construction.
Eventually, we did make it into Austria and shifted to a smaller
highway, one that permitted top-down driving. The weather
remained cloudy, so we could not see all the mountains around us, but
it was nice to be in the open air.
Our
first stop in Kitzbühel
was our hotel, the Hotel Garni
Entstrasser. This hotel selection was my (John's) job and I may
not have paid enough attention. It was a kilometer out of town
and pretty plain. I suppose the better view is that it was homey, even
with air-dried (=rough) towels and sheets. Maybe at the end of this
trip
we will place all of our accommodations in order and, if so, at the
time I wondered
where the Entstrasser will rank. (In fact, we gave the hotel a
mediocre rating on the "Booking.com" survey and received nasty email
from the owner in return. Clearly put the Hotel Garni
Entstrasser off our list of recommended places to stay!)The kilometer walk to town was pleasant, past flower-encrusted homes and kitchey horse carriages. Our priority was lunch and we stopped at the first spot we saw, the Huber butcher shop. Huber served full meals as lunch specials and we made this our big meal of the day, big and tasty.
After this, we needed to walk for a few hours to work off the calories. The old center of Kitzbühel was filled with tourists eating ice cream or just sitting on benches watching other tourists. We joined them, except we chose white wine and cheese cake. Good people watching, however.
     
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The graveyard also provided a look at history. In Germany, few graveyards have residents from before World War II, probably due to the complete upheaval caused by that war. Here in Kitzbühel, there were headstones from the last 100 years, some quite elaborate, signs of relative stability over the years. Nonetheless, there were also signs of past wars where the sons of Austria fought and died in far away Serbia or Russia.
  
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Wednesday
We started the day with no plan. I suppose we should have joined the healthy people and walked up and down mountains, but that's just not us. Instead we got in the car, took the top down despite the clouds, and drove into those same mountains. Easier.
We went south, through the foggy Thurn Pass to the small town of Mittersill. There we shopped a little, looked at another church, and tried to come up with more of a plan. The most exciting activity we could think of was to just take the long way back to Kitzbühel, so we headed west.
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Not far from Mittersill, we passed under the aerial cars of the Panoramabahn. This seemed like our way of climbing mountains. We turned around and into an almost-empty parking lot. Not many people choose to go up for a panorama on cloudy days I guess. We did and, on the rides up and down, enjoyed the scenes of cows, chalets, and hazy valleys. On the top, we saw pictures of what the view SHOULD be, but still enjoyed the fog-filtered mountain light and hints of the far-off Alps. We did have lunch in the hazy sun-light patio. Marianne had curry wurst and fries and I had "German" pancakes and applesauce. Comfort food.
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Tomorrow we hope to get more sun, because we have plenty of panoramas left to see. Maybe.
John and Marianne