One of the most exciting parts of Europe is to order bread with breakfast as Brot and as Pane at dinner. Today we crossed 5 minutes out of Füssen into Austria, on to Innsbruck for Lunch then a few hours further south through the Dolomites into Lago di Garda for our stop for the evening.

We headed off headed up through Zugspitze and the enchanting alpine vistas. Somehow I screwed with the car satnav and avoided tolls all morning, whilst it meant an unnecessary hour on the road, it also meant seeing more of the Tyrolian village life than we would have taken in at 150km/h. We had intended to fly down in the mountains today and spend most of our time in Italy (Trento and Lago di Garda) but we ended up so captivated by Innsubruck we were stuck there for hours. 

First we went to the Bergisel, the olympic Ski Jump, although you can see it from most the city, we didn't make it up here last time. If you're scared at the idea of the ski jump already, imagine how these guys feel practicing on astro turf? Just as we got to the footing of the jump the jets came on to wet down the turf, perplexed it was only a few minutes later with a fully grown human flying through the sky towards it that we understood what that was all about - insane! Imagine the carpet burns he would have suffered if this had gone wrong.

Of all things, searching for Altstadt from where we were lead to a town on the other side of Europe called Winterthur, only serving to remind me of the finale tempting me to download. We remembered that Innsbruck has the Sacher cafe in the old town (ie Sachertorte) in minute google maps had us heading in the right direction. It's so quaint, we scrolled the old town for the next few hours with a lazy lunch mixed in amongst it. 
 
It was only as we were leaving Innsbruck that all the road closures/impairments turned our expected 2 hours drive to Sirmione into a three hour one. Along the way there were plenty of opportunities for the family to practice head between the knees as I rounded a corner at 160k to discover a stationary lorry. Emerson saw the bright side "Great way to test the airbags Dad", though perhaps that was more smarm that charm. 

What vistas we saw as we made our way into Italy, the Castelli and Monasteries started to dot the alpine vistas, and soon enough the Dolomites melted lower into the landscape until we found ourselves perched on the shores of Sirmione on an outcrop of Lago di Garda. The perfect place to end the day. Emerson's hightlight was that the hotel has "one of those butt baths like at Garry's house", I couldn't admit it to her, but it was one of mine too :)