Man, we've spent 3 days in the ski resort Bad Gastein. It wasn't exactly action-packed, but I still never managed to find the time to blog. So I'm writing this on MS Word in Vienna ready to copy/paste tomorrow morning. Or whenever really. But before a Vienna update anyway.

We woke up in Salzburg on our last day with the sun shining and the snow melting. We weren't too sure what to make of the positive weather report the previous day, but things were surely beginning to look up. A quick bus journey took us into the station. The buses are cool in Salzburg. They all run from the electricity lines above the roads. You should be able to see the lines in some of my pics. They're very quiet and probably great for the environment. And not too much of an eyesore I reckon. Great if you got the power supply I guess. Anyway, the train took about an hour and a half. Went through lots of awesome mountains. Was brilliant.

Then we got off the train in Bad Gastein. Weather was great. Sun was beaming, no wind, but still plenty of snow on the slopes for the skiers. It didn't seem like a big place to begin with. We only saw the one big street with lots of hotels and lodges and things coming off of that. It wasn't a long walk to our place. A lovely building, a lady opened the door for us before we could even ring the bell. She welcomed us to her house and showed us the apartment we'd be staying in. It was huge! Just like having our own flat again. And a bath too! Wooh!! After chilling for a while, we had a little walk around. Lots of skiing going on and hot spring baths too. We were definitely going to check that out. Pamper ourselves. Why not?

Our first whole day in Gastein was my birthday! Katie made her classic scrambled eggs for breakfast. Quite possibly the best scrambled eggs in the world. Then we headed out for a 'short' walk. Of course, as we headed past the baker's we just had to pop in for a bit. We had a couple of lovely cakes and milkshakes. I don't think they've made milkshakes for a while. The ladies seemed a little confused when we asked for them. But we had a nice little private celebration in there. As you'll see in the photos. The short walk turned into quite a long, tiring one. We headed down the road and found out that Bad Gastein is a good bit bigger than it first appears. We walked down steep hills and discovered the waterfall. Its not the biggest I've ever seen but there's a huge amount of water pouring over that thing and it makes a hell of a noise. Especially since you can pretty much sit right at the bottom of it. So we followed the river down for a while after that. A very pretty walk, but we decided to stop half-way and not spoil the rest of the route for the next day. Still took a good while to get back to the main street though. Then we spent a couple hours in the supermarket again, most of which was spent looking for a gravy sauce with no meat in it. They don't use the 'V' vegetarian symbol here, which is a bit pants. Makes it quite difficult. After that we headed home for a rest and figured it was a bit late for going swimming. I popped a film on and we had a nice home-cooked dinner. Our first in a while. Then to bed.

We walked the rest of the way down the river the next day. Was very nice. Weather was holding up fine, although a bit of rain did start and stop again soon after. It was a great walk, which possibly would have been more fun on bikes. Renting bikes didn't turn out so well for us though. Gastein is all steep hills and tight roads until you can figure out where the good bike tracks are. We took a couple of wrong turns and Katie wasn't confident on the bike at all. So we didn't go up the big hill which we thought would take us to a track and had to walk a few sections of very steep road. A half hour or so in I was pretty sure we were moving in the right direction. We went down more hills and were probably pretty close to the bottom when my back tyre went completely flat. Katie thought she'd heard something coming from my bike, but bikes don't make noises right? Been a good while since I rode a push-bike, I'd forgotten the tyres can get punctured. Yeah, so we had to walk all the way back to the shop. We broke a hell of a sweat getting there and the dude couldn't even fix it for us, or let me do it. I think Katie was happier walking anyway. And it was a great walk. Our legs were aching and we were shattered when we got back. That made the swimming baths all the better though. We loved the baths. They had a bunch of indoor pools and a couple outside too. All water from below the ground actually cooled down to make the swimming more comfortable. One of the pools had a long row of seating with bubbles coming up. We enjoyed that. Then we noticed a small room to the side with a waterfall in it. That was possibly the best massage you could ever get. Gallons of water hurtling down 3 metres or so to batter off your shoulders. It was amazing! As was the outdoor pool. The warm water mixed with the cold air outside was crazy. Especially when it started raining. I think we spent almost 3 hours there. Felt very refreshed afterwards. Ready for another good meal and then bed before we had to leave the next morning.

I guess the worst thing about staying in an apartment to yourself is that you gotta do a lot more tidying up before you leave. You spread your things about a bit more too.

Well, this has dragged on long enough. We've already been in Vienna about a whole day and got a bunch more photos. Check back in if I haven't put you off.