Seefeld 2001 - 14th - 21st July

We stayed at Frienhotel Kaltschmid in the centre of Seefeld. The hotel is very large and has a swimming pool on the top floor. The hotel was very luxurious and the accomodation was excellent.

This is a view from our hotel window. As you can see, all of the buildings are built in a traditional style.

Seefeld is not very far from Innsbruck and so we took the train down the valley. The views from the train were very spectacular and showed how Innsbruck was at the bottom of the valley and Seefeld was on a plateau halfway up the side of the valley - see below:

Innsbruck is a very picturesque city with many sights in the old town. However, I have been to Austria several times and every time I try and go to Innsbruck it rains - there wasn't any change on this trip either!

We hired a car for a few days and this gave us the opportunity to explore the area properly.

Unfortunately, the car was an 'economy' model and therefore was a bit gutless. This meant that we had to change down into first gear to get up the hills!! I know the roads can get very steep in Austria, but you would have thought that we would have been provided with a car to cope with them!

On one day, we visited Krimmel Waterfalls (1072 metres above sea level) - the highest waterfalls in Europe. It had been raining quite heaviliy and so the waterfalls were especially spectacular.

Seefeld has a fernicular railway and cablecars which can take you to two of the peaks surrounding the town. This trainsport system is called the 'Rossutte' and you can get a pass that will enable you to have return journeys on the railway and the cablecars. There is also a mountain path that runs parallel to them so you can always take the healthy option!! We travelled up on the cable cars and then took the mountain path part of the way down. Unfortunately the path proved to be more suited to mountain goats that us and what with the heavy cloud rolling in it became a bit worrying!! However, things turned out OK and we certainly earnt our apple strudel after that!

Mark looking very tired halfway along the mountain goat trail!!

Overall we had an enjoyable time, although we did miss the mountains as they were shrouded in mist and cloud for a large part of the time. We both would like to return some day when the weather is a bit better and maybe also visit Seefeld in the winter and try out the skiing.