Arrival and getting to know Kitzbuhel

Having dropped Ivor off the night before we had an early start, making it to Glasgow in good time. We had a nice lunch before check in and everything went really smoothly - no queues and no delays (in fact we made it to Salzburg 20 minutes ahead of time). The transfer went smoothly and the hour and a half coach journey went in really quickly. We were hungry though and not sure we could wait til 9pm to eat something so we tucked into the sandwich we’d made at home the night before. Turned out to be a mistake though as we were bloated and were presented with a light meal on arrival at the hotel. We agreed to cut down on bread (or cut out completely if possible) for a while after we’re back! After eating we unpacked and headed to bed, exhausted.

We set the alarm for 7am on Sunday as we were meeting the tour rep for the welcome tour around the town, which lasted about 40 minutes.

Beautiful, colourful buildings. Clean streets. Expensive shops.

Afterwards we had coffee and signed up for some activities; the first of which was the quiz that night. We spent the rest of the day walking around familiarising ourselves with the Kitzbuhel area



The shops were largely closed and of the designer variety but we found a lovely bakery/cafe for coffee. We resisted the temptation for cake but resolved to go back and treat ourselves later in the week.

Lynne at Lake Schwarzsee

Blair at Lake Schwarzsee

After a walk round Lake Schwarzsee where we enjoyed out first picnic courtesy of the hotel, we spent the rest of the afternoon revising for the quiz for fear of embarrassing ourselves… Can you name the eight countries bordering Austria?  What about the height of Kitzbuhler Horn anyone?

Later that night, at Hotel Jagerwert, we joined a mother and daughter from Northern Ireland to make up a team of four for the quiz; we also had two young kids on hand to help when a question about The Little Mermaid came up. Lo and behold we actually came fourth out of 14 teams and how shocked were we?  Team ‘The Celts’ surprised ourselves - but I think that was in most part for the extra five points we got from Blair’s paper cow (that he concentrated so hard to make from behind his back).

The weather has been lovely so far, a great start to the holiday and this part of Austria is very similar to what we experienced in Rhupolding a couple of years ago. Stunning scenery, not overly touristy, beautiful buildings and clean streets.