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 - a tour through the west

Hello lovely people, long time, no blog.

Austria had to suffer from an immense heat wave these last few weeks. During the day the temperatures rose to 39 degrees and it didn't really cool down in the night. We don't have air conditioning in our office, so I sweated day and night and wasn't really able to sit in front of my laptop and type up a post. 

But now it finally cooled down and I am able to take you to our trip through the western part of Austria, that my man and I took last week - prepare for a photo-heavy post!

When I was little, my parents always travelled to Tyrolia with my brother and me and I loved our week long holidays. My man and I decided to spend our  summer holiday in our own country this year and it was an amazing trip. 

We started by travelling by train (with our borrowed motorcycle on the back of the train - his Harley had to be repared so we had to borrow another motorcycle for this holiday) from the very east of Austria - where we live and where everything is flat as a pancake - to the most western city in this country. It took us all night to get there. It was the first time that I spend a night on the train and I loved it. I commute by train to work everyday, so I'm used to the motion and the sounds. Slept like a baby. 

the borrowed motorcycle. Not very cool or fast - but really comfortable!

On Monday we arrived in Feldkirch at 8 a.m. We took the motorcycle from the train an started to drive to the next big city, Bregenz. Bregenz is located at the Bodensee and shares a border with Switzerland and Liechtenstein. It's famous for it's annual opera performance where the stage is built into the lake. This is what it looks like this year: 

the beautiful stage

lots and lots of terracotta warriors

After a nice cup of coffee we decided to drive a little more this day. We stopped when we felt like it, for example at this refreshing river. It felt amazing to just sit there and tip your toes into the icy water, breathe in the air and look at the cows on the mountains. Being in the nature always calms me down and because the West looks so different to my home it's easy for me to stop thinking about work or other problems at home. So I really was able to get in the holiday mood. It was extremely relaxing!

isn't this beautiful?

We took a little detour through the North of Italy, to have our lunch. The North of Italy is called "Southern Tyrolia" as it belonged to Austria before WW1. The people there see themselves still as Austrian citizens and they all speak German there. It's a beautiful landscape. Just across the border we came across the Reschensee. It's an artifical lake - with a church tower in the middle of it! You can read a little about it here.

the church tower in the middle of the Reschensee

It was really important for me to visit the Krimml Waterfalls. These are the highest waterfalls in Europe. I've visited them with my parents two times before (though that was a long time ago) and remember that I was really impressed. We hiked 400 metres uphill - and hiked them down again. That may not seem much but we're really not used to it! It was really amazing and even my man, who didn't want to go hiking was impressed and talked about future hiking trips on various Austrian mountains!

part of the waterfall

a rare picture of me! ;-)

the proof that we hiked up to 1.400 metres!

tested the black and white option at our camera. I should use it more often!

the sun looked so beautiful!

constant rainbow, caused by the fine droplets of water that splash from the waterfall.

Speaking of Austrian mountains: Here's a picture of Austrian's highes mountain: The Großglockner. It's a glacier and it's 3.798 meters high. There is a street called "Großglockner Hochalpenstraße" which leads 48 kilometres around the mountain. A MUST for every motorcycle rider! But it was really great and you had such a nice view! Again - extremely impressive!

driving up...

that peak in the middle is the Großglockner.

We spend the weekend at my sister in law. Her little lady, now two months old, got baptised on Sunday and we were invited. We had three really nice days with them and all their kids (she has two boys, now aged 7 and 8!) and it was a nice round-up to a nearly perfect holiday. Though I'm back at work I still feel relaxed and calm and happy.

happy nephew!

But as we always suffer from wanderlust we're already planning our next trip. We're thinking about visiting Thailand in February. But that's for another story.

Where did you go for your summer holiday? Do you prefer holidays in your own country or do you love to go abroad and explore new countries and new cultures?

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.

Travelling Austria: Green Lake, Tragöß, Styria

Hello lovely readers. How are you? Did you have a nice weekend? I have to tell you, my weekend was absolutely fabolous! But let me tell you everything about it! 

My weekend actually started on Thursday! It was a holiday on Thursday which meant - no work! How nice to have only a three-day-work-week. I could really get used to that!
Anyway, since both my man and I had the day off and since the weather was absolutely amazing, we decided to visit his grandmother. She has an amazing garden - flowers everywhere! We helped her get her pool ready for the summer. Not entirely an unselfish act since we like to come to her to swim in the pool! But it was a nice and fun afternoon! My man's cousin and his girlfriend joined us in helping her. While the men worked in the pool, us girls picked fresh strawberries. Which were devoured right there, without washing them, still warm from the sun. No strawberry from the supermarket can compete with that. 

the pool and HALF (!) of my grandmother-in-laws backyard!

her amazing flowers!

and the best strawberries ever!

I took the day off on Friday because I really needed a long and relaxing weekend. My man had to work, so I had a whole day for myself. I spend the morning finishing the baby blanket for my sister in law (3 more days until she's due, I'm so curious if it's gonna be a boy or a girl!!) and decided to spend the afternoon at the lake. I always dreamed about living near some water (lake, sea, river...whatever!) and now that I do, I hardly ever spend time at the lake. Which is a real shame, since it's just a 10 minute bike ride (with my gorgeous new bike) from my appartment to the lake. So I packed my bags and a really big book and did nothing but bathe in the sun (and the water) and read and eat ice cream all day long. What a beautiful time I had. I should do this more often!

a little duck that waddled around me the whole afternoon!

My man fulfilled his life-long dream and bought himself a Harly Davidson motorcycle two weeks ago. He loves it and as I love riding along with him, we decided to make a quick weekend-trip to Styria. (route here).
So we strapped our tent and our sleeping bags to the Harley and drove off to the Green Lake. As we arrived rather late on Saturday, we decided to spend the night at a camping site and visit the Green Lake first thing in the morning.

"our" Harley. And everything we needed for our trip strapped on the sissy-bar.

The camping site was gorgeous! It was just a small lawn near a small lake. There were cows all around as munching on the green grass. We put up our tent, drank a nice, cold and refreshing beer and settled in early as we were really tired from the day. 

Next thing in the morning we packed everything in and drove 3 km to the Green Lake. The Green Lake is surrounded by the Hochschwab Mountains. The name "Green Lake" originated because of its emerald green water. The clean and clear water comes from the snowmelt. During the winter, the lake is only 1-2 meters deep. During spring, when the temperature rises and the snow melts, the lake reaches a maximum depth of 12 meters!! It is very popular with divers as during its peak seasons, wandering trails, benches and trees can be found under water!

We had a little stroll around the lake before we got back on our Harley and drove back home. I won't write anything further, just let the pictures speak for themselves!

Did you have a nice (maybe long) weekend as well? How did you enjoy this fabulous weather?

Travelling Austria: Gmunden

I've been away last weekend. It was kind of a spontanious trip. See, my mother isn't feeling that well at the moment and so she is on rehabilitation in Upper Austria. She's in a center where she has been before and she really liked it and it really improved her health. That was three years ago. Back then, I visited her twice. Once on a day-trip with my brother and the second time I went there with my father and we stayed for the weekend.

And that's exactly what we did this weekend. And what a lovely time we had! It was really great.

The name of the little town we visited is Gmunden. If you want to know a little more about the history of Gmunden, have a look here, it's really interesting! 

Gmunden is famous for it's ceramic pottery! When people get married in Austria it is common to give them a tableware set of "Gmundner Keramik"! As you know I have a faible for mugs. And of course we had to visit the outlet store and I bought some lovely bowls and a even lovelier mug. (Pics will follow!)

The rest of the day we spend walking around town. Its such a beautiful old town. When Austria was still a really big empire, the emperor Franz Joseph loved to spend his summer holiday in and around Gmunden. 

Gmunden is located near the lake "Traunsee", the deepest (206 m) lake in Austria. We strolled around the lake just when the clouds began to disappear and the sun came through. 

We walked to the castle "Schloss Orth", a little castle that was built in the 11th century. It belonged to a very nasty and evil landlord who was famous for his cruelty. In the 1990s it was the set of an Austrian telenovela. 

The next day we made a little boat tour on the lake. The weather wasn't as nice as the day before but it didn't rain, so it was okay. The boat tour took about 50 minutes and was really beautiful. I love this landscape, it's so nice and everywhere you look you see so mich history and tradition! 

We went to lunch to a hotel near the lakeside and had the most amazing dinner! My mum and I ate the best lamb that we've ever eaten!  

And because both my mum and I have a sweet tooth, we ordered a delicious dessert plate! It had mousse au chocolat on it, a chocalate cake, Tiramisu and parfait. 

Needless to say, we ate EVERYTHING! It was worth every.single.calorie. 

I'm still going for a run tonight, though! ;-)

Oh and the best part - I found new shoes! Every holiday is perfect, if you come home with new shoes. Don't you think?