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Published: August 31st 2007
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20 August
So here I am, tour leading - so looking forward to this! Trip code
ED14 with Oak Hall. Not had a great deal of sleep since Spain - had a full 12 hours on Saturday night, but then went out to
St Nick's Sunday evening, and by the time I'd finished packing it was nearly midnight. I had to be up by 2.45am, to shower and get to
Stansted airport for 4.30am - thanks to James McKenna who drove me there! Ensuring that my
Oak Hall clothing was on display I stood near the check-in desk, and soon recognised the red Oak Hall tags - so that was the first hurdle over - everyone here, and everyone checked in OK (and considering we were flying with
Ryanair, amazing that a couple of people got away with over their 15kg of luggage - although they WERE told they'd need to pack more carefully on the way back!). We then got to security, and found there was an issue with liquids, so we checked that in as a seperate item, whizzed through security (very small queue, although the rest of the airport was heaving!), grabbed some food and then headed for the departure gate.
All safely on, I tried to ignore the kissing couple next to me, and then when we landed we all obediently shuffled onto the bus, and drove the - ooo - 50 yards to the arrivals gate!
We then needed to get ourselves to
Hotel Edelweiss in Itter from this point, and Tim had given us a couple of timetables. Amazingly, all our luggage came out and straight out of the front door to the bus stop, and 2 minutes later we were on the bus to Salzburg Hauptbahnhoff. Straight in to buy the train tickets, fortunately checked the platform with the ticket seller (who spoke perfect English - I had tried my German!) - and the train pulled in as we got on the platform. Most of the seats seemed to be Reserviat (then when we checked the timetable, we'd gone past most of those stations, so lots of options!) and we made our way to
Worgl. Once outside the train station took a little while to work out which bus was ours, and the driver had just closed the doors as we headed towards it, but we looked so frantic he relented! The bus then dropped us right
outside the hotel, where Peter & Alison were almost ready for us. We took an hour or so to unpack, then, before our throats decided they had been cut, headed back into Worgl for some food (really, there's nothing to eat in Itter aside from a small bakery open limited hours!), where Peter directed us to a good pizza place in a shopping centre - we were all happy with that. No one wanted to wander Worgl, so we took a taxi back to the hotel and chilled/sorted stuff out until the rest of the guests arrived at about 9pm (many of them hungry as the coach driver had said that food would be available in Itter - well it was, but only bar snacks!)... but everyone was pretty quickly settled in, and those of us who'd had to get the early flight crashed - once we'd been given some information on
Innsbruck, which, because we'd arrived in rain and the following day didn't look too promising either, we decided to go to the first full day.
21 August
First stop,
Bergisel Ski Jump. Only an hour there - so a quick look around the base, then we paid our entrance
fee and took the funicular to the top - there was some good views from there, and some fun to be had pretending to ski off the jump! As there was so many people waiting for the funicular on the way down, we walked down - gave a different perspective! Someone had jokingly said that there was a graveyard at the bottom of the ski jump for all the people who crash out... and, indeed, there was a (normal) graveyard to be seen from the base of the jump!
Back on the bus, on time (yes!) we headed into Innsbruck main. We were dropped off by the Triumphal Arch, and naturally spread out into groups. Within no time we were near Innsbruck's famous
Golden Roof - much smaller than expected. We hung around here for some coffee, and watched more silent statues, took note of the
Helblinghaus which I've seen in many tourist guides. Next we spotted the Stadtturm with it's 140-something steps, and decided to climb that (note the 3 Euro entry fee) - a good view from there back to the ski jump, and found a number of Oak Haller's up the top! Then it was time to
check out
Cathedral Dom Jakob as seen from the top of the tower (and about which Liz had waxed lyrical - the flat roof, painted to look as though it was domed!) - pretty impressive! Just time, having looked at the
dirndl, cuckoo clocks and Austrian hats, to check out the
Swarovski shop - well worth a look even if you don't want to buy, and the Winter Wonderland exhibition in the basement was pretty amazing!
Had informed everyone that the bus would be leaving at 4pm, whether they wanted to be on it or not. Was incredibly thankful that at 3.58 I counted everyone on, and we were off early - amazing! Got back in the evening to the first of many great evening meals and evening meetings (yes, I was prepared - just!) and discussion of the mountain activities available over the following week, although we didn't quite manage to pin it all down (unfortunately).
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