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Published: August 15th 2008
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Grundlsee
View from the back door of the bus After a good nights sleep (the bed didn’t seem too hard - no worse than the Chinese beds!) we decided we were going to head west to a place called Bad Aussee (loosely translated bad means bath or bathe and see is lake) in an area we later discovered to be called Salzkammergut (love that name!). We were staying off the autobahns as we did not have a sticker on our window but most of the roads were pretty good. Once again there were many motorcyclists on big bikes taking advantage of the good weather on the weekend - and a few of the men in blue with their radars at the entrances to small towns. The scenery all the way was pretty spectacular, especially the mountains, and when we got to Bad Aussee we passed straight through and headed out to the nearby lake - Grundlsee. We were looking for a quiet campground and drove right to the end of the lake and stopped at Gößl (pronounced Gossel I think), a truly picturesque spot which the photos probably do not do justice to. Add to this a second lake within walking distance (Toplitzsee) and a crystal clear stream between them
complete with waterfall made for a great 2 days exploring.
At this point we figured that if we wanted to see Vienna (which we did) then perhaps we should do it now before we got any further west. We also figured that traveling the smaller roads was great but ended up taking ages to get anywhere. So we headed back to Liezen and bought an autobahn sticker and jumped on the A9 then the A1 and headed for a little place on the Danube River called Melk. The autobahns are not only the straightest path but also the flattest, tunneling through the hills and bridging the valleys until we got out of the mountains. We got to Melk late afternoon and found the info centre, a supermarket and a camping ground on the shore of the Danube River. First thing we did was crack a couple of coldish beers and sat with our feet in the river watching the boats - very nice. The camping ground was pretty basic with taps and power boxes and shower and toilets attached to the nearby Gasthof. We’ve got a little table and cook on a small gas stove, so with Jac’s culinary skills
we seemed do all right. The next day we had a wander around the old streets of Melk and by around 2 o’clock the clouds were building and thunder could be heard so we decided it was a good time for lunch as we had not brought our brollies. After lunch the rain had passed and we went back to the campsite, stopping off at the ticket office to book tickets for the boat for tomorrow. Our little campsite was starting to fill up by about 5 with cyclists stopping over, there were lots around this area, so we had our showers a little early to avoid the rush and running out of hot water. A light dinner was had on account of our late lunch and a couple of coolish beers before bed. We decided we it would be a good idea to get a little fridge and a power cord to plug in the bus at campsites (it already had the socket on the side), then we could keep things cold.
Our boat trip on the river the next morning didn’t leave until 11 so we didn’t have to rush breakfast and the day looked fine and clear.
River
Morning walk next to river It was a 1½ hour trip down the river to Krems through the heart of the Wachau region and 3 hours back. The region is famous for it’s white wine and apricots and there were a number of castles to see as well. The day turned out to be really hot and even Jac had to don her cap but it was a beautiful cruise and of course it would not have been complete without a couple of cold beers and gins. The Danube River was not actually blue but green but the scenery was great and the castle ruins at Durnstein in particular looked most impressive so we decided to revisit it later in the bus. Sausages, mashed potato and salad for dinner with a half decent pinot from Burgenland (€3.99 from the supermarket) went down a treat, it was a good day.
The next day was like the last, fine and hot. We were going to revisit Durnstein but wanted to go shopping first so we stopped at St Poltein at a hardware store and grabbed the necessary bits. Finding our way out was a bit of fun but we ended up heading in the right direction in
the end. Driving through the towns and cities is made more interesting by Dobby’s dodgy first and second gears which can at times be very hard to find, hopefully it will be ok until we can get it fixed when we get back to Passail for Ferd’s birthday. The little town of Durnstein was really cool and the walk to the top of the hill was great, although 30° heat and no breeze was not so cool. (I can hear the groaning about the NZ weather from here!) We met some neat people over a couple of beers in the town afterwards and then headed to a campsite on the other side of the river for dinner. Unfortunately our new power cord needed an adaptor to plug into the campsites euro socket so we had to wait a bit longer to keep our new fridge cold. It has a 12v plug also but we didn’t want to use that unless driving. The view of the castle at night from this side of the river was also cool but unfortunately the photos turned out a bit blurry.
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