A later season Alps trip this year - spending the first week of August on the River Inn in Austria and Switzerland. There's a bit of everything there, from flat to death on a stick - more than enough to keep everyone happy!
We stayed in Prutz, which has two rather nice pizza restaurants and a lot of apricot trees.
paddling past Pfunds
Besides kayaking, we also went swimming several times - in the local pool, lake, and an amazing spa - more on that later. Much entertainment whenever we came across any sort of slide!
On Wednesday afternoon we headed up to the Kauntertal Glacier. A fantastic road to drive with 29 hairpin bends, beautiful scenery and lots of points of interest en route.
stopping at one of many viewpoints
At the top of the road is the glacier itself - with gondola to the top of the mountain (which wasn't running), restaurant, playground, and an ice crevasse you could walk through.
I'd forgotten quite how impressive alpine thunderstorms could be - I think we had one every day. The first being on our drive down, soon after crossing the border into Austria when the sky went black and the windscreen wipers couldn't keep up with the rain... wow. Sunday's storm hit when we were 2/3 of the way down the river.
Friday was a rest day before the loooong drive home. We headed over to the Oetz valley and went for a walk up the (disgusting!) Wellerbrücke section of the river before having a traditional Tyrolean lunch, at which point a large storm appeared.
Further up the valley in Längenfeld is the Aqua Dome - an amazing spa, great for some afternoon relaxation. When another thunderstorm kicked off we decided the best place to be was in the outdoor brine pool. Pretty cool to watch, but they did eventually kick everyone out on safety grounds... I speak practically no German, but I have definitely now learnt "das Gewitter"!
Wimbledon fortnight usually sees me glued to the television watching as much tennis as possible. This year's has obviously been extra amazing with Andy Murray winning, but what makes it even better is that I actually went!
Getting tickets involves a lot of queueing, money, or luck. I went for the third option - getting a pair of tickets for day 3 on Court 2 in the club ballot (albeit as a 'reserve' when the original person declined the tickets - thanks, whoever you were!)
So me and mum hopped on a train to London and had a fantastic day out.
Day 3 sees the first lot of second round matches - which this year included several big names getting knocked out (including the mighty Federer!), and too many other big names retiring injured, which is always a shame.
The matches we saw were:
Dustin Brown vs Lleyton Hewitt (6-4 6-4 6-7(3) 6-2)
Petra Cetcovska vs Caroline Wozniacki [9] (6-2 6-2)
Michelle Larcher de Brito vs Maria Sharapova [3] (6-3 6-4)
Kenny De Schepper vs Marin Cilic [10]. Sadly Cilic pulled out injured instead we got:
Kirsten Flipkens [20] vs Bojana Jovanovski (6-4 6-4)
Our seats were at the south end of the court looking towards Centre Court, so I was keeping up with the Murray score on the scoreboards there, as well as sneakily checking on the Wimbledon android app.
The most popular match was obviously Sharapova. It was probably also the loudest, with both of them squeaking away constantly. Mum commented that she should maybe have bought ear plugs along...
Of course it wouldn't be Wimbledon without the obligatory strawberries & cream and a glass of Pimm's. Expensive Pimm's - £7.50 per glass! In fact, 'expensive' is a good word to describe pretty much everything - the prices in the souvenir shops were completely ridiculous.. I spent £8 on a single keyring, t-shirts were £30+ and if you wanted one of those giant tennis balls that kids get the players to sign it was £18. crazy.
But they do let you take your own food and drink in, which is something I guess.
So happy to see Murray win the final on Sunday though - I was out kayaking so missed the first set, but was expecting him to win in four or five, not straight sets! Definitely not going to complain though
tags: Austria holiday paddling Switzerland 
