Summary: Theo and Jeff flew into Zurich, Switzerland on July 10, 2013. We rented a car and drove to Austria, where we spent three nights in Gargellen (gar GEHL len), three nights in Neustift im Stubaital (NOI shtift) and five nights in Soelden. We hiked a lot and ate a lot in all three places. We then drove to Konstanz, Germany, on the Bodensee (Lake Constance to foreigners), where we did a lot of sightseeing and shopped 'til we dropped most of the euros we had. Our last day was in Zurich, with more shopping and sightseeing. The weather was absolutely perfect for all 14 days of this vacation!
Gargellen is a small town up in the mountains in Montafon in western Austria. We did a simple hike the first day, while we adjusted to the new times (i.e., got over our jet lag.) The second day we took a gondola up a mountain and hiked some small trails to various lakes. Here are some pictures of Gargellen. You can click on the pictures to enlarge them.
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| Alpenhotel Heimspitze in Gargellen |
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| A view from our hotel room |
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| Theo on the way to a small lake up in the mountains |
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| Another lake toward which we hiked |
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| Elton John up in a mountain huette above Gargellen. This kid had a lot of fun being pulled around the terrace on this little cart by his brother and sister, who were on bikes. |
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| Theo (in pink in the white chair) basking in the sun at the huette |
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| A view of Gargellen from the gondola (the "bahn") |
Best incident of these three days in Gargellen: Watching from the gondola on its way up the mountain as a woman, two border collies and a honking Jeep attempted to drive four horses up a grassy ski slope to a mountain pasture. As we watched, one of the horses broke away. The jeep and the lady and the dogs all went after it, whereupon the other three horses turned and raced back down the mountain, closely followed by the fourth. Our last image was of the woman with her hands on her hips, the dogs and the guy in the jeep all looking back down the mountain at the fleeing horses. Wish I'd had a video camera - it would have been a YouTube sensation!
The Alpenhotel Heimspitze in Gargellen had great food, very, very friendly staff and owners and really nice suites. We may go back in future years and stay a little longer. Don't come to Gargellen in the summer, though, if you don't like hiking, because there is nothing else to do.
On our third day, we drove 10 miles or so to Partenen and took a bahn halfway up a mountain. [We could have taken the Europatreppe stairway with 4000 steps, but we chose not to do so. The town has a race every summer up those steps. The winner usually breaks 20 minutes!] We then walked 1.6 miles through the mountain, by way of a dark 10' by 8' tunnel which opened out onto a wonderful view on the other side of the mountain. There was a beautiful lake (Vermuntsee) which we hiked around. The path crossed five small streams, which Theo negotiated with no difficulty. Our practice on rocks in our backyard, along with strong efforts during the year to improve muscle strength and balance (working with Jennie Meharg, our personal trainer), allowed Theo to overcome situations that would have stopped her a year or two ago. We finished the hike by going back through the tunnel and taking the bahn back down.
Here are some pictures of that hike:
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| A blurry picture of the 1.6 mile tunnel through which we walked (both ways) |
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| The Vermuntsee and the mountains at the other end of the tunnel |
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| Theo walking across the dam that held the lake |
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| The hike around the lake |
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| A view of some of the 4000 steps leading up the mountain from Partenen |
After three days in Gargellen, we took the scenic Hoch Alpen Strasse (High Alpine Road) as it wound its way through the mountains toward Ischgl and Innsbruck. The road had lots of switchbacks. It took us over an hour to go about 30 miles, but we got some great views of the mountains.
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| A view along the High Alpine Road |
After three hours or so, we arrived in the beautiful Stubaital (Stubai Valley) and the town of Neustift. The windy drafts off the mountains make the valley one of the best spots in the world for paragliding. We were tempted to do some tandem gliding with the pros, but the cost for 15 minutes worth could practically pay for our next vacation, so we chose not to do so.
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| Paragliders taking off from a mountain pasture above Neustift |
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| Elisabeth and Thom, our friends from Austria |
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| Theo, Elisabeth and Thom hiking a trail above Neustift |
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| Jeff and Theo taking a break during our hike. |
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| Our trail took us to the base of that rocky summit. Note the alpine roses to the left of Theo. |
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| A slightly smudged view of Neustift and the Stubaital from our hotel apartment window |
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| Another view of paragliders - zoomed from our hotel balcony |
On our second full day in Neustift, we took a train about twenty miles into the old town area of Innsbruck and spent the day shopping.
After our last night in Neustift, we got up early and drove to Soelden, to catch an 8:00 a.m. hike up the mountain for a hotel-sponsored breakfast at Gampe Thaya. It was our third time breakfasting at that huette. The owners are so nice and the food, all of it grown on the Gampe Thaya farm, is so good!
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| Approaching Gampe Thaya with other hotel guests |
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| Our outdoor breakfast at Gampe Thaya |
Later we checked into our hotel and each of us had a massage, then spent time in the spa's pool and Jacuzzi.
The second day in Soelden, Theo rested and Jeff climbed a wicked mountain with our perennial guide, Christoph, and a 16-year-old Belgian girl, Lois, who had climbing a mountain on her bucket list. She did great! The climb was four and a half hours up through rocks, across mountain ridges, up to a cross on a mountain peak and then back down slightly to a mountain huette at about 9000 feet. We had pancakes and cranberries at the huette and then took about an hour and a half to climb down far enough to meet the hotel van that had come to get us. Lois and Jeff were pooped. Christoph went off to run up another mountain in preparation for his triathlon.
Here are some pictures from that hike, which I consider the toughest I've ever done.
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| Christoph and Lois at the start of our hike |
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| Negotiating rocks, which we had to do the whole hike |
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| Preparing to cross some snow; tough footing |
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| Resting on the way up a particularly tough set of rocks. Christoph, of course, wasn't even breathing hard |
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| Looking back at where we'd started - somewhere beyond the second hill on the left |
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| Lois and Jeff on the peak, before we headed over and down to the huette. |
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| A view from the peak - you can see the huette just to the right of the middle of this picture. We had to follow the ridgeline to get there. You can see some of the path above the snow - just below the peak of the mountain in the middle. |
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| Climbing straight up a rocky wall, with the help of the chain |
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| At Brunnenkoglhaus, the mountain huette |
Having survived the tough hike, we spent the next day on an easier one, with Lois and her father, Frankie, along with Christoph. On this hike we climbed a mountain road out of Obergurgl up to a high alpine valley, then traversed a path along a river for a mile or two, before eating lunch at a mountain huette. Here are some pictures.
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| Shorts and a shirt, with Obergurgl in the background. Note the start of the potbelly - that Austrian food is so good! |
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| Frankie, Lois, Christoph and Lois' dog coming up the road above Obergurgl |
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| Theo, Christoph, Frankie and Lois along the mountain river. |
On our fourth day in Soelden, we headed over to Laengenfeld to hike up to a new suspension bridge in the mountains. Christoph, Christoph's daughter, Alena, Frankie, Lois and her mother, Marianna, were on this hike (along with many other people checking out the bridge.) None of us much liked the sensations as we crossed the bridge, but we all did it without much effort.
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| Marianna, politely waiting for Jeff to catch up |
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| Resting at a farm on the way up |
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| Posing before crossing the bridge |
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| Posing on the bridge (Note: the bridge wobbled and swung a lot) |
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| Looking back up at the bridge, as we were heading down the mountain |
On our last day in Soelden, Theo and Jeff took a four and a half hour hike up from Soelden to the Edelweiss Huette, then almost all the way up to a glacier, then across a mountain to the middle station of the bahn, which we then took down. It was a great finish to a terrific eleven days in Austria.
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| The view of Soelden from the terrace at Edelweiss Huette |
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| Theo swinging around the hill to head up toward the glacier |
On Sunday morning, when we left to head toward Konstanz, we bumped into a parade of some sort in Oetz. We followed a phalanx of cars trying to circumvent the parade - and were hung up for about twenty minutes with lots of other cars - when the parade turned into our escape route.
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| Temporarily stranded in Oetz |
We got a little bit lost in Konstanz, trying to find our hotel, but eventually succeeded. The hotel was converted from an old monastery and was really beautiful, both outside and in. It also had a fantastic breakfast spread as well as a view to die for. We spent two days in Konstanz, mostly in the old town, shopping. We liked the pedestrian-friendly streets of Konstanz even better than those in Munich and Innsbruck. And just about every block had gelato for sale....
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| A view from our hotel. The water on the right is Lake Constance (Bodensee). The bridge on the left is where the Rhein River starts, flowing out of the Bodensee. |
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| A view across the lake of our hotel - Steigenberger Inselhotel |
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| A view from the hotel of Konstanz harbor on the Bodensee |
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| Theo gyrating somehow in front of the Bodensee |
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| One of the pedestrian-friendly streets of the "altstadt" in Konstanz |
We finished our trip with a day of shopping in Zurich.
This was an almost perfect vacation trip - perfect weather, great hikes, great hotels, helpful people, reuniting with Austrian and Belgian friends, excellent and plentiful food, good shopping, beautiful locations. Probably our best European vacation ever. It will be hard to top next year.
