"Are you fit?" "Did you say that you workout?" These were the questions our tour guide was shouting to me as I struggled to keep up with him and my husband biking through the hills of Austria. We had booked a bike tour in hopes of seeing more of the beautiful Austria countryside and getting some leisurely exercise in during our vacation there, but I wasn't so prepared to be huffing and puffing with my heart rate at a sky-high level. Our guide was a little man in his 60s, originally from somewhere in Asia, who seemed to be in good shape for his age and told us he exercised daily. While I already knew that my husband was stronger and faster on a bike than I was from our bike date workouts through the hills of California, I wasn't really expecting our guide to be as hardcore of ... [Read More]
Austria
Vegetarian Living in Austria
Happy Friday! I am SO happy it's the weekend. I've been feeling so crazy busy and tired since getting back from my trip and am really looking forward to relaxing and resting up a bit over the next few days. Today's post is about my eats while in Austria. Let me start by saying that one of the reasons I love California is because it's so easy to be a vegetarian here. Both areas I've lived in in this state, San Diego and now the Bay Area, are wonderful for a girl like me who is into healthy, meat-free living and real food. I can go down the street to a farm and pick up some fruit & veggies, and mostly every restaurant has at least one thing that's vegetarian. I anticipated the cuisine of Germany & Austria to be dominated by meat, but what I found there was that nearly every ... [Read More]
The World’s Largest Ice Cave: Austria’s Eisriesenwelt
One of the few things I had planned on doing ahead of time while we were in Austria was seeing Eisriesenwelt - which translates to "World of Giants Ices" in German - the largest ice cave in the whole world. The cave is 26 miles long, so you can nearly run a marathon in the cave if it weren't for, ya know, all of the slippery ice and freezing temperatures in there. (source of images) The ice cave is located in Werfen, a town not a far distance from where we were staying in St. Johann, but it was quite the trip getting there (which is half the fun might I add!) that went as follows: Walking from our hotel to the train station --> train ride --> walked to a bus stop, but not before walking completely into town to figure out what we were doing --> hiking --> cable car --> ... [Read More]
A Natural Wonder: Austria’s Liechtenstein Gorge
Hi friends! After many hours of travel, I arrived back in the good ole USA last night. My trip was amazing, and as usual when I go on trips, I’ve caught the travel bug and am plotting my next 5 excursions! ;-) Here’s a look at the route we took once in Europe: Last year my hubby and I bought a timeshare. Since we've experienced some buyers’ remorse from the moment we bought it, and since we’ve been paying it without seeing anything up front, we wanted to be sure to use it for the first time during this vacation. I checked out my timeshare options with only about 6 weeks notice, and this is how Austria became a big part of our vacation. To be honest, I didn’t know too much about Austria until planning this trip, but once I started to learn more about the country, I knew it’d be an ... [Read More]