30/08/2011 Day 21. Swiss National Park - Sta. Maria
Had a bit of a lie in this morning, I didn't get up til half 8! How about that mum? We got the van ready to go and set off around 10.30, heading into the mountains for our hike about. We set off from the car park and headed into the trees, they were all pine trees. We were heading for the peak of this particular mountain of 2300m. We set off from just over 1700m so we got around 600m of vertical distance done. It took around an hour for us to reach the top where we had some dinner and took in the views. You'll have to see my pictures to best describe how far we could see and the mountains that were there. They weren't as snowy as the Austrian ones though. We headed down afterwards for about another hour following a small river. We could see where the river would cover most of the area we were walking in in spring, when all the snow melts from the caps. There were areas where the trees had been wiped out and knocked over probably from an avalanche. We got back to van and headed Italy-way. We reached our other campsite of Switzerland in Sta. Maria at about 2 o'clock after Dave had to drive through the tightest town in the world, we barely squeezed through. We had a wander around the little town and didn't really see much, there didn't seem to be many people around nor many shops. What we did see though was "The World's Smallest Whiskey Bar", it's actually in the Guiness world records, apparantly. After a few hours hanging around a campfire and having some food, me, Aaron and Dave, decided to head towards that very same bar. We went in and got speaking to the man behind the bar, there were 5 bar stools in there and about room enough for 10 more to stand if they were friendly. The guy behind the bar was telling us about a singer from Scotland who had been to the bar and wrote a song about it, he was called, I think it was Robin Laing, who had more songs he played on his iPod. We spent about 2 hours there chatting, asking him about his travels, his life, why he did whiskey etc. We had a great time. The whiskey we had was 66% called Secret Inspiration, it had won 1st place in a blind taste test against Scottish whiskeys too! We had the whiskey and next to us were little beakers with pipettes and water in them. This was because you should smell the strong whiskey then add 2 drops of water in and smell it again, the smell was much more ... Vibrant? Wierd word to use but I don't know how to say it, just more of a rounded smell. We put some in our gob and he told us to chew it "not shoe it" to taste the flavours. It was really nice! I enjoyed drinking whiskey tonight. He told us that the altitude we were at drinking the whiskey is the higher than any point in the UK. It must be why it's colder up here than Croatia. We told him we're going to Venice tomorrow an he said, when we drive 50km down the road toward Italy the temperature will rise by 10 degrees at least and that in Venice it should be around 35 degrees, even at this time of the year. Great guy, great bar and great whiskey. I'll never forget that place. Took a couple of pictures too to help me remember it. Just as we were about to leave, Aaron didn't see the huge step behind him, he fell right down it like a drunken lout! It was hilarious, he ruined the full night :) got back to the van and looked to the sky, there were so many stars in the sky, better than what we could see in Plitvice, it looked brilliant! Bed time now at 11pm ... Again, I always seem to finish writing these at 11, heading to Venice tomorrow. It should be about 5 hours of driving to our number 1 choice campsite, if we don't get in that it'll be a 2 hour drive to get around to the others. Fingers crossed! Au revoir.