however we did manage to visit a few big tourist sites, including the home of the original sacher-torte, allegedly the
world’s most famous cake, which was pretty cool.
The temperature was definitely starting to drop at this point in the trip, and from memory we had our first proper
dose of rain while we roamed Vienna. It was also around this point that Chris and I realised we had largely packed
for summer, so a bit of winter shopping was required. We were pretty devastated to learn from the H&M clothing
salesperson that not only does Vienna get colder and colder in the coming weeks, meaning it would be freezing by
the time we returned, but that a few weeks after we would leave the city when we returned, the city would be
covered in snow. That would have been incredible to see in person, but sadly was not to be.
Austrian Tyrol
From Vienna our coach took us on to a small place called Hopfgarten in the Austrian Tyrol. No one had really
expected too much from this stop off, but I'm very confident most of the tour would rate it as one of their favourites.
Apart from the weather being almost perfect, our daily activities, including mountain biking and white water rafting,
were amongst the best of the tour. That said, nothing we did compared to the ridiculously beautiful countryside
surrounding us. It was like all those typical German and Austrian postcard photos of picturesque, impossibly green
rolling hills with a lone wooden cabin resting atop one of them and a crystal clear river snaking through the grassy
knolls. Except instead of being on a tiny bit of card it was all around us for as far as the eye could see. Our tour guide
for our mountain biking expedition took us up the mountains in the area where we got some of the most amazing
photos of the trip, and were astounded to learn from him that almost the entire lush, green area around us would,
like Vienna, soon be coated in waist deep snow, with the area pretty much turning into ski fields.
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