Week in Review: Week 9
As of this week, we’ve officially been travelling for two months! Sometimes it’s hard to believe, especially when we look back and try to remember everything we’ve seen and where we have been. It’s been very busy these last 9 weeks! This week we’ve been in western Austria, staying in a town called Axams. We’ve been here for a week and it’s been a great location to explore nearby sites. We are also right in the mountains, which always makes it feel like home.
In most places we end up staying only a few nights, and it gets quite tiring and overwhelming when you see new and amazing things each day. So we’ve booked a few weeks in Romania where we will be planted for a couple of weeks starting in mid-July. We are excited for a mini break! Before then, we will be visiting some family in Graz, and then spending a few days in Budapest.
Highlight of the week
Sharleen: Kristallwelten. In 1895, Swarovski was founded in Watten Austria, just a 20-minute drive from where we are staying. Right beside the Swarovski factory is an awesome museum called Kristallwelten, or Swarovski Crystal World. I visited this museum 12 years ago on a family trip to Europe, and I remember being blown away by the entrance and the exhibits, so I was excited to go back and see it again. It was just as fascinating as the first time I visited! It felt like an adult playground, as each room we visited brought displays that intrigued all of your senses. They even add scents to each room so the smells bring another element to the exhibits. My favourite indoor exhibit was probably the Crystal Dome. It is a geodesic dome with 595 mirrors, and it creates an effect that makes you feel like you are inside of a crystal. In the center there is a display with plants that are touch sensitive, so when you touch the plants music plays and echoes throughout the dome. It was a really fun part of the exhibit, and we spent quite some time in there playing with our reflections, making music, and taking interesting pictures.
Outside there are many exhibits as well, including a maze, garden, playground, and water show. The water show went off every 15 minutes, and only lasted 2 minutes, but the shows were mesmerizing! The classical music they played, along with the choreographed water display, was so moving – I actually felt emotional watching the 2-minute display! We both really enjoyed the water show, so much so we sat in the gardens and watched three different displays before we needed to leave the museum in time to buy groceries before all of the stores closed.
Darrell: Neuschwanstein Castle. This castle is pretty spectacular! It was the project of Ludwig II, who was the King of Bavaria in the 19th century. The king was removed from power and died mysteriously only one day later, which adds to the drama of the castle. The castle design was inspired by German knights’ castles that Ludwig II admired. It was under construction for over 17 years, but unfortunately was not completed as construction ended upon Ludwig II’s death. During both WWI and WWII, the castle remained untouched leaving the parts we see today as mostly original. It was built on the very top of a hill and has spectacular views of both the valley below and the mountains behind. Prior to going inside, I thought we had seen everything a castle or palace could possibly have, but I was wrong. Although only certain portions of the castle were complete, the interior was basically one large art piece. The walls were painted with large murals and the level of detail found in the woodwork was really amazing! The interior looked almost new, and was highly detailed, but for me it most impressive part was the picturesque exterior of the castle. It really looked and felt like something that you would only see in a movie or TV show. This was the first castle we have visited where I could have sat on the hill and stared at it for hours!
Least favourite part of the week
Sharleen and Darrell: Liechtenstein. We were both excited to visit Liechtenstein because it is one of the smallest countries in the world – 6th smallest in fact. It would also be the 8th country we have visited so far on our trip. It was a quick 2-hour drive away, so it seemed like a no brainer to go visit, maybe grab some lunch, and then come back home. Overall we found the trip underwhelming, a little boring, and really expensive.
Our trip there started with a surprising $15 toll tunnel, which was a bit disappointing as in Austria you purchase something called a vignette which gives you access to toll roads, but this tunnel is excluded. It was a cool tunnel, almost 14km long, but still an expense we didn’t expect to have to pay. From there it was only about 45 minutes before we crossed into Liechtenstein. Liechtenstein is a small country, only 160 square kilometers. When googling what to do here, nothing really popped up, so we decided to head to their capital Vaduz. By driving here we almost drove through 2/3 of Liechtenstein. We parked and then went to an information centre to get some souvenirs. We grabbed a few postcards, postage, a sticker, and purchased two stamps for our passport – because it’s in the Schengen Area, you don’t get stamps at the border, but we were excited to have a stamp of this small country, so we decided to buy one. In total, this little shopping trip cost $28 CAD, which seemed crazy expensive to us. From there we grabbed a mediocre meal of pizza and a burger, which was close to $50 CAD, the prices were reminding us quite a bit of Norway!
There are a few sights in Vaduz we wanted to see: the Red House, the Old Rhine Bridge, and Schloß Vaduz. I love the names of these places, I guess if you are such a small country you can have places called “Red House” and “Old Bridge”. The Red House was the first place we visited, and it was actually super cute. It was nice to see the mountains in the background, and the vineyard in the front. It’s actually one of the largest vineyards in Liechtenstein. We didn’t pay to go inside, as the outside view is what we wanted to see. From here we decided we have seen enough castles, and didn’t need to go see the Vaduz castle. From the town you get a great view of the castle, and that was good enough for us. So we opted to visit a winery instead, and try some local wine.
Wine is actually very popular in Liechtenstein, and they pride themselves on their Pinot Noir. We tried three samples, and all were very tasty and different from other Pinots we have tried. The wines were quite expensive, almost 4 times the prices of what we paid during our Austria winery visit or what you would find in a liquor store in Austria. So we only bought one bottle. We also had to pay for the tastings, so all in all the winery cost us close to $50 CAD. It just didn’t seem worth it, as we bought 5 bottles from a winery in Austria for about $35 CAD.
We walked back to our car to drop off our wine. As we got closer to our car, a lady looked up and asked if this was our car. We said yes, and she said that we were parked in her parking spot. We had no idea, as nothing in the parking garage was labelled as reserved. We had also paid for that stall, using the stall number, which meant we couldn’t just move our car to another place. We didn’t want to pay for parking again, so instead we decided to just leave. Rather then stopping at the bridge, we quickly drove past the Old Bridge, and there was nowhere to park so we weren’t able to get a closer view. The bridge is the largest wooden bridge on the Rhine, and connects Liechtenstein to Switzerland. Although it looked cool we only saw it in passing, and we made our way back to Austria, definitely feeling underwhelmed. We did find a way to bypass the toll tunnel, and it led us through an awesome pass and through some cute ski towns. It was a way nicer drive, and only took an extra 30 mins. It was really gorgeous!
Favourite city/town/village visited
Sharleen: Axams. We had an Airbnb in Axams for 7 nights, and it turned out to be such a great place! Our Airbnb looked onto a small ski slope, and the balcony had amazing mountain views. We enjoyed watching the sun set almost every night, and I loved waking up and having my morning coffee on the balcony. We’ve spent more morning and evenings outside here than any other Airbnb. The town itself is adorable. It’s a cute Austrian town, with alpine houses, beautiful gardens and flowers, and little cafes and grocery stores. Everything we need is in walking distance, although our apartment was on the south side, and was quite a bit higher than the rest of the town, so you definitely felt the burn in your legs on the walk back to the apartment. Our apartment was on Olympiastraße (Olympic Street), and this is likely because if you follow the road past our apartment, you will find yourself at Axamer Lizum. Axamer Lizum is the ski hill that hosted all of the alpine ski events during the 1964 and 1976 Olympics, when Innsbruck hosted the games. The ski hill was beautiful, and was surrounded by gorgeous spiky mountains. If we had more time I would have loved to take the cable car up to one of the many hikes on top of the mountains.
This was the first Airbnb we booked that didn’t have any ratings. Usually we only pick apartments that have at least 3+ ratings so we know what we are in for. However, there weren’t too many to choose from in our price point, so we took a chance and booked this one. It turned out to be a great experience, and the location was perfect. It was nice being just outside of Innsbruck, as we had beautiful scenery and it was nice and quite. It was also just as convenient as Innsbruck, close to all of our day trips including Liechtenstein, Neuschwanstein, and Kristallwelten
Darrell: Innsbruck. We were able to visit twice during our stay in western Austria and I had a blast walking around both times. Innsbruck is nestled in a mountain valley that really reminds me of home. It has as similar feel to Banff or Canmore, or basically any kind of ski town for that matter. The old part of town has neat architecture with colourful buildings. There were a lot of shops and cafes scattered throughout, which made it fun to stroll around and window shop. Innsbruck hosted the Winter Olympics in both 1964 and 1976. This gave us the opportunity to go up the ski tower where the ski jumping took place and get an amazing view of the city. Even though we have a ski jump at home in Calgary, I have never visited it and now I feel like I have to go when we get home! This has become a recurring theme throughout this trip. Both of us realize how many cool things are right around Calgary and we have definitely taken it for granted. We are looking forward to explore the awesome perks Calgary and the Rockies have to offer when we get back. It took us leaving and experiencing new places to have a greater appreciation of what we had all along! Maybe it’s the similarities between Innsbruck and Calgary that I enjoyed so much, either way, it has been a great place to visit.
Favourite meal
Sharleen: Tom Ka Ghai Noodle Bowl. Thai food doesn’t come to mind when you think of Austria, but on one rainy day we were both craving some type of spicy soup. We stumbled upon this place called My Indigo. We both had a noodle bowl that was full of ramen noodles, fresh vegetables, and Thai chicken coconut broth. It was the perfect thing to warm us up, and definitely satisfied our cravings for something flavourful with a kick.
Darrell: Liver Dumpling Soup and Potato Salad. This was a super simple meal, but was crazy tasty! The soup was a simple broth with one liver meatball, one potato dumpling ball, and one bread ball. Nothing to fancy or crazy, but it was light and packed full of flavour. The potato salad was a classic warm German potato salad with cooked potatoes, oil, vinegar, and some herbs. Again, super simple but soooo tasty! Sometimes it’s the simplest meals that are the most flavourful and satisfying.
Our 7 days in Axams has flown by! We really enjoy being able to settle into one place, rather than rushing through in a day or two. We are looking forward to this next week as we pop into Italy and then start making our way east across Austria.
