Travelling Austria - Wellnesshotel Pierer (mountain pasture wellness)

oh my, seems that I'm writing nothing else but Travelling posts these days. But two weeks after our wonderful tour through the west, we had another little time out. Our families know, that we love to travel. Travelling through Austria, through Europe our through the whole world is our shared hobby. My man and I have little in common (surprisingly - the relationship works perfectly fine. Opposites do attract, apparently!) but we really share our love for adventures and our need to see as much of this beautiful world as possible!
When we got married in April, our parents and my man's sister gifted us with three vouchers - each for a weekend away in a beautiful hotel in Austria. And so we decided to use one of those vouchers to have a little spa treatment in a wonderful resort in Styria, about a two hour drive from our home.

The hotel was wonderful! It's called Almwellness Hotel Pierer. It's located at 1.200 metres obove sea level on a little mountain. Styria is called the green heart of Austria because of its forests and vegetation. Unfortunately, it rained during our whole stay so we didn't get the chance to wander around the mountain a little bit.

Instead we spend the time between eating, reading and sweating in the Sauna. The hotel hat 6 different saunas. We got a massage and I got the chance to try out my first yoga lesson. I LOVED it and it won't be the last time, that I'm doing some yoga. I already looked up a yoga course near my home and I can't wait to give it a try!
The breakfast buffet was amazing - the hotel treated us with homemade and local products, in the morning as well as for the 6-course-dinner in the evenings. Let me tell you that we had a very, very nice stay there.

Enough with the words - here are some pictures for you to enjoy!

our wonderful room

the view from our balcony

another picture of our room. that cow greeted us every morning!

the view we had from the rest area

they had this beautiful natural pond, unfortunately it was a little too cold to use it...

the 90 degrees hot sauna. It originally was a hut on the top of a mountain. I loved the smell of wood inside.

a shower inside a hollow old tree.

no words needed. amazing view.

Travelling Austria: Stift Vorau

It was fathers day last Sunday here in Austria. I thought long and hard about which gift I wanted to give my father as he is - as any man in my opinion - complicated when it comes to presents. He has everything he needs and the things he wants are too expensive for me to get him. So I decided to give him something that money can't buy: TIME.

I called him a week earlier and told him, that for fathers day, I wanted to do something with him. What we would be doing would be his choice. We could go to the cinema. We could get dinner. We could go for a walk or a swim or a bike ride. Whatever he wants. 
In the end he decided that he wanted to do a little road trip with me. Getting out of the house for one day, spending time together, just me and him. So we drove two hours to Styria, where we visited the beautiful Stift Vorau. It's an old monastery. My dad visited it about 35 years ago and since then always wanted to see it again. We made a tour around it which ended in one of the most beautiful libraries I've ever seen. If my man and I ever get around to build that house we are talking about all the time - I expect my personal library to look rather similar to this one. I'm already buying tons of books to get it filled. 
Anyway - enough words. Here are some pictures. Enjoy.