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Published: December 20th 2011
Austria for two days.......it wasnt meant to be this short.We set off from venice hoping to make it to Seeboden for the night.The journey was uneventful and not scenic till you get over the austrian border at Villach when the mountains start to loom.We missed the turn off to seeboden so we went to Gemund..a beautiful little walled town and Ruby had to suck in her tummy to fit thru the archway to enter the town.We found a lovely wooden gasthof..with fluffy dooners and a lot of stuffed austrian animals and spent the night..our first in pension.The next day we set off to the timeshare in Grundlesee.... and Vienna for Xmas..on the motor way after 50kms it gently started snowing..this got heavier and by the time we turned off at Radstadt ..the snow was thick..I was scared then that Ruby would not do well and sure enough Denis was driving and the first down hill when we braked she slid fortunately into the hedge on our right...the road snow scraper men quickly came and pushed us out because we blocked the traffic...then 50 mtrs on we slid again but nearly tipped over this time but miracfulously righted ourselves...the police came that
time and were fantastic.They pushed us out again and we confessed we couldnt drive it at all so they drove it to the petrol station and told us we needed winter tyres..or chains maybe both to get traction. This onehorse town had nothing.....we sat in Ruby oh a very glum pair not knowing what to do next....what were we thinking should have stayed south!!!!..we were lured by the mild autumn that we had had not thinking all the snow would come in one day...suddenly we new we had to turn back we had neither the courage or skills to face more snow. There was no accomodation here so with much discussion with the petrolstation man..he told us to wait 2 hours and if the roads cleared...go like the clappers.This in the end is what we did..i drove this time and it was so scary..after5 kms we were on the motorway..but even that had some snow on it .I did 25kms per hour and pissed off half the austrian motorists....we both felt sick with a short lived PTSD during that trip and one tunnel we went thru had no lights inside ...that was horrific too...but after3 hours of fear we made
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The last mountain on decent.... hoofuckingrayit back to our gorgeous gasthof in Gemund and got stuck into the wine to debrief..they were suprised to see us back and laughed like hell over our story....weird!!They do where funny hats!!......The next day we headed back to Bologna to regroup and find somewhere to stay over xmas.The coast seemed the best option so we crossed the mountains on the west coast and headed to Levanto near Cinque Terra.What a majical town ..it clings to the cliffs and looked gorgeous in its xmas lights and dcorated shop windows .The campsit was amazing a friendly guy..we were the only people so he let us have the run of the place.That night we went out to celebrate back in Italy with some local wine and the owners kept bringing us more and more free food..it is the custom this side of Italy to give you foccacias and nibbles with your wine.We had a lovely night and woke up deciding to have xmas in france on the riviera with sun and definitely no snow.We would head to San Remo for a night and then France.
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alison guida
non-member comment
Finally!!!
Hi Jilly and Denis!! Have finally realised how to do the blog thing. Have had a lovely time reading everything! What a wonderful trip..........seems like the time to do it rather than in the summer do you think?? How cold is it tho? Do you nipples nearly fall off?