Amazing Austria

Our quiet bus of post-party travellers stopped at the foot of the Austrian hills in Tyrol, where we had a morning of white water rafting!

We disembarked the bus, got into our thermal wet suits and each grabbed a corner of a raft to carry them down to the riverside. The scene looked like a Zombie apocalypse of tourists carrying boats to the river...until we got in the FREEZING, fresh water from the mountain springs!

The water is incredibly clean and healthy to drink straight out the river, which we all did! Rafts in the water, we started our move downstream with safety briefings up first, starting with another unexpected dip into the river for man-overboard. With all safety stuff done, we got paddling (not that we needed to with the current).

From the moment we got into the river, which was pretty much at the foot of the mountain it flows through, the views were beyond spectacular, really making a person feel belittled by nature, but as we got further down the river, the views only got better!

We had a few rough sections but nothing too extreme, with the main memory for me being the amazing natural terrain of Austria. It really is the most beautiful place I've ever seen, on a post-card and in real life.

After an hour of rafting and gasping at the perfect scenery, we beached at their end base, greeted with a traditional 'not for sissies' Austrian Schnapps! A group photo and lunch later, we were back on the bus to thaw our extremities for some more incredible sights in the town of Tyrol, where our hotel is.

The next stop was the Swarovski Crystal world, aka girls' dream world... Shiny stuff covers nearly everything except the grass outside! It was quite impressive, I appreciate fine craftsmanship and Swarovski seem to have that skill finely tuned as they show off in their crystal museum.

A quick drive and we were back in the mountains at our hotel. We had a few free hours to walk the, almost intimidating, valley of what can only be God's artwork.

After seeing some of the clean, modern but historic village, we had a swim in the pool under some warm Austrian sunset and, after supper, boarded the Schnapps train for a trip around the village to see the sights up close.

The 50s style old steam train (which was actually a converted tractor with trailers) arrived and hauled the lot of us up the steep hills into the mountains for the evening. A couple of stops at some local mountain top Schnapps brewers, and a whole lot of scenery admiring later, we clocked in for an early night.

The next morning we got up early to a misty Austria, still as beautiful as ever, but with an eery blanket over the hills. We, unfortunately had to leave, but it is definitely a place I want to return to.

Next stop - Venice and Rome, Italy!

Bier Steins, Bicycles and Austria

After a great kick start to our tour, we left The Netherlands and set course for Deutschland.

I closed my eyes for a snooze, opening them to the sight of the post card scene of the Rhein Valley's Black Forest, Germany.

We carved down the hills to the riverside and into the the little town of St. Goar, arriving at our hotel. We checked in to a tasty german supper, and used our free afternoon for a relaxing walk along the Rhein river, taking in the sights of medieval castles and villages. We retired to bed early for an early start the next morning.

After breakfast we headed straight to a Bier Stein crash course on the making of and history of the sturdy German beer glasses. Amongst their collection are limited edition Steins such as their Berlin Steins, which each have a piece of the actual Berlin Wall when it was destroyed, uniting East and West Germany. The Steins are so much more than containers to the Germans, not to mention the excellent craftsmanship and painting on them, which caught my eye, forcing me to buy my own little Stein as a reminder of this little bit of German history.

Across the road was a Black Forest Cuckoo clock shop, where more stunning craftsmanship in the shape of these wooden clocks. The fine details and artwork got the better of Rox and she now has her own piece of the Black Forest. We then packed up and headed to Munich.

After a long drive, we arrived in the amazing city and hopped straight onto bicycles for a riding tour - my highlight of the tour so far!

All 50 of us made our way through the streets, stopping at the many historical monuments and landmarks of the history books hosted by the city, including palaces, court houses and gardens where Royalty of the 16th century went about their royalness...

We arrived at The Englischte Gartens (English Gardens) - the most perfect example of public gardens or a park you could imagine. Huge green fields, sunshine, forest and a river were the prime features.

We rode through the leafy, green forest paths to a point along the river where we decided to take a dip. This was where the braver of the group stripped down to undies (it's a nudist legal park, so we were fine) and jumped in! We were immediately accelerated to 20-25km/h in the freezing, fresh water! Fast flowing downstream, we grabbed an overhanging bridge and shimmied to the side. We ran back to the park and lined up for round two! No one was keen for a third round, so we got dressed and made our way to the Bier Garten for some supper.

The Germans are renown for their beer, meat and pretzels, so when in Germany... Do as the Germans do! We all grabbed a Stein (1 litre) of the Deutsche brew, and an oversized meal to go with it, mine being a massive Eisbein (Pork Knuckle), and Rox a pretzel bigger than her plate!

A wobbly gaggle of tourists hopped back on the bicycles and we headed back out the park. On our way, we stopped at a section of the river where a wave forms as it follows the contour of the riverbed, making a natural wavehouse! The surfers lined the banks, taking turns jumping in to surf the wave - quite a sight to see in a park in the middle of a city!

After a (rather squiggly) ride back, we walked into town to see the famous Bier Hause (Beer Halls), including the Haus that Hitler burst into when an opposition party were meeting, and fired a shot from his gun through the roof to silence them. The bullet hole is still there of course!

We had a night on the town planned for the evening, so we freshened up at the hotel and made our way to the high-end German night club, Pacha. We kick started a great night out, making memories and stories with our new mates.

The next morning, our very quiet bus took us to the post card country of Austria, but that's a whole new blog!

Cheers for now!

Leaving for Contiki tour

Straight after Rox and I got back from Disney Paris, we had a night at home and left for London to meet up with our Contiki Tour team.

We said cheers to the guys at home and made our way to the hotel for our kick start meeting to sign on, check documents and meet 'n greet. We joined our 50 strong group of over excited 18-35yr olds and made friends straight away, 4 of which are South African too! That makes 6 of us in total, 2 each from Durban, Joburg and Cape Town!

After a social evening in the pub, meeting the diverse mix of everyone from New Yorkers to farmland Aussie, the mood was set for an awesome next 12 days!

We were up early and on the road at 7:30am to Dover, where we would cross the channel by ferry, waving goodbye to the White Cliffs and saying hello to the sunny beaches of Calais, France.

Our Dutch bus driver switched over to driving on the right side of the road, and we made the 4-5 hour drive to The Netherlands, driving through another beautiful place, Belgium. Eventually we arrived after the European traffic held us up, dropped our bags, grabbed supper in the hotel and went straight to the canals for our evening cruise under a warm Dutch sunset.

The open top canal bus hosted a free bar which was immediately surrounded by the group like bees around a hive! We cruised down the canals of Amsterdam admiring the old churches and buildings mixed in with the thoroughly modern, futuristic-looking architecture. The amount of people that use the canals as transport, a place to eat supper, a venue for an event, a place to float a restaurant, etc is amazing - something us foreigners used to mark ourselves as tourists!

The relaxing canal cruise, predictably, quickly turned into a canal party! The music started up, and the sun went down...

After the cruise was over, our rather wobbly 50 disembarked and we all hit the town. With a quick tour through the infamous Red Light District, we made our way to the Dutch nightlife of pub/clubs and made some great new memories with our new mates.

We woke early to an unsurprisingly quiet breakfast table before packing onto the bus again, an heading into town to see the beautiful side of Amsterdam in the daylight, and beautiful it really is!

We got dropped off at Anne Frank's House. This is the actually house where she and her family hid from the Nazis for years during World War 2, and where she wrote her famous diary.

Rox and I then teamed up with a few of our Aussie and Canadian friends and went to the Rijksmuseum - an incredible Dutch art museum. This was also an eye opener to see the unbelievable paintings and sculptures by famous artists such as Rembrandt and Van Gogh. We finished it off by taking a few photos by the huge "I AMSTERDAM" letters outside the museum before we hopped on a tram back tithe middle of town. We walked the alleys and shops in the historic little city and met up with the rest of the team for some food and boarded the bus to start our journey to St. Goar, Germany!

We are now stuck in yet another massive traffic jam, hence why I decided to utilise the hinderance instead of sleeping!

I'm really looking forward to Germany and the next few days there. I'll keep the updates coming as we get time but it's a busy tour!

Cheers, everyone!