Austria

got up at 7:30 a.m. to drive to Austria. beautiful drive, again, most of which everyone else missed. me and my alert eyes saw tons of stuff and thoroughly enjoyed the mountains, river, lake, castles, trees, and crops.

first stop today is for most of the group to go white water rafting. i chose not to do this, so me and about 10 others waited at the end point. a nice little area, but not much to do so i went for a walk to the village nearby and found nice houses to take pictures of, a pretty church, a cemetery around the church, lots of flowers, and even a snail. i don't think i've ever seen a complete and moving snail before, so i was pretty excited. :-) beautiful shell, moving slowly on the sidewalk, rain pounding down on it. went back to the end point and ate a hot dog. by this time the rafters had returned and were eating lunch as well. then we all piled in the coach and drove to the Swarovski Crystal World.

this place is weird. can't really explain it, but a cool place. it's sorta like modern art made out of crystals, but not. there were 13 different rooms with stuff to watch, listen to, see, and smell. and of course, at the end, was a gift shop where you could buy a crystal vase for 4,500 euros.

since we're in Austria, as we drove down the rode we listened to "The Sound of Music" soundtrack. we were supposed to sing along and really get into it, but we have a dud group, unless they're drunk and partying, so it didn't work. only a couple of us sang along to "Do Re Mi' with Rachel. she was disappointed, but oh well.

we drove to a little ski village to hang out before we checked into the hotel. we were early and couldn't check in until after 6 p.m. and the hotel was in a location where there was nothing to do, so we went to this little village to shop and hang out for an hour.

went to hotel, which was a mountain chalet. beautiful and fun and ideallic Austrian. the river was nearby and a church was next door. otherwise there really wasn't anything to do or see. had dinner served to us at the hotel. soup, salad, chicken & rice, and red currant cake. all was good. Eelco, our bus driver, came over after dinner and talked to us (mostly me) for a while. actually he talked to me a lot today. i think he might like me. he's a nice guy, very funny and sociable, but a little dorky-looking. still, very nice and fun to talk with.