Finding our accommodation in our 'mountainside town' proved very difficult thanks to some very ambiguous directions (or as she called them, "constructions") from our Russian-Austrian host Evgenija in Hall in Tirol, a medieval town about 15km east of Innsbruck. We checked into our room, where pink satin covers and girls clothes seemed to indicate we had kicked out our host's daughter from her regular bedroom, awkward. That evening we walked back into town and explored the very small old town with a very dark and creepy church which had a section that held about 50 skulls of some kinds of bishops that had served the church in the last hundreds of years.

The next day was our only full day in the area to see the beautiful scenery, so after some advice from the tourist office, we caught a bus to a nearby town higher in the mountains and then caught 2 separate chair lifts up the mountains to do a hike through a pine forest which was recommended to us. Not having been on a chair lift for ages we found the journey up the mountains a lot of fun, until we started seeing signs of snow ahead and no indication we were near the end... Soon enough small piles of snow were appearing on the ground and within 10 minutes we were traveling through a massive pine forest entirely blanketed in fresh snow from the day before. As our hands began to go numb we started wondering if we were going to be able to do the hike at the top or whether we'd have to turn around and come right back down! Luckily the weather at the top was perfect and quite a bit warmer so we jumped off the lift and headed into the white forest!

The hike was one of the most amazing things we have done on this trip. As neither of us have spent a lot of time at the snow, some of the sights were completely new to us, such as snow melting so quickly out of trees that it was 'raining' melting snow! The chair lift guy told us on the way down that over 600 people had come up the mountain the previous weekend, however there were only 4 other people whom we saw on our hike, which really added to the serenity (how bout that serenity)!

One thing which rattled us a bit with the Airbnb process was that we had a few problems with our host at this place Evgenija. First night we were skyping Ant's mum in our bedroom with the door closed and the volume quite low. We were chatting away up to about 11:30/12am when a knock came at our bedroom door. It was Evgenija in her nightclothes glaring at Ant. She then proceeded to tell us to stop talking and it was time for "goodnight" in her own unique broken Ringlish (Russian English). We thought this was pretty rough all things considered, and although she apologized the next day and tried hard to be extra friendly, we weren't comfortable again in her house.

There were 2 more incidents which overall made sure we were never happy at this place. The first being when she accidentally texted us to come and pick up our stuff immediately and get out. By the time we got home and noticed the message, she had come to us to tell us she had sent that to the wrong people. She then tried to complain to Airbnb about someone who stayed at another property she had listed, only to manage to stuff it up again and accidentally submit a formal complaint against us! We were not at all happy with this woman by that point, so she got a very negative review, cop that!

Check out our hike photo album! Next stop the home of Sound of Music; Salzburg!