From Amsterdam it was time to hit the road again, and head down through the Netherlands, Germany, Austria and finally into Italy where we would pause for another few days. We collected the car at Schiphol airport, loaded Wiesbaden into the GPS as our first destination and we were on our way.
When I realised that the route we wanted to take down through Germany was sending us near Wiesbaden, there was no choice but to stop there. In the early 70’s Grannymar spent a couple of enjoyable years working in the USAF Hospital there – and even blogged a funny story from that time.
Wiesbaden was one of the few locations in which we had difficulty in locating our hotel – mainly because the GPS would get us close, but then it would get lost because of the tall buildings. We decided to park the car in one of the city centre car parks in order to avoid circling the one-way system once again. We hiked down and located the hotel and obtained our room key, then set out to move the car to a closer (and subsidised) car park before we brought our luggage down to the hotel.
We had selected a new ’boutique’ hotel for this one night stay, and we were highly impressed by the Town Hotel. The rooms were spacious and nicely decorated, and the bathrooms came with ‘rainfall’ showers. Instead of the traditional mini-bar in the room, they had a large ‘American-style’ fridge in the lobby, with a large range of beverages, chocolates and other bits and pieces, each priced at only a few cents more than the local shops – you simply helped yourself and told the receptionist what you had consumed upon checkout. Having seen bottles of water priced at around €3.50 in other hotels, this was a refreshing change.
That evening we took a wander around the town until we found an Italian restaurant and enjoyed some lovely pizza and wine – just practising for Italy! We would have loved to continue learning about the city the next morning, but unfortunately we had the long drive to Austria ahead of us, destination Innsbruck.
In order to cross into Italy, we had to take the Brenner Pass through Austria. The Brenner Pass is a mountain pass through the Alps along the border between Italy and Austria, and is one of the principal passes of the Alps. It is the lowest and easiest of the Alpine passes, and one of the few in the Tyrol region.
Even though it’s the lowest of the passes, it still felt pretty high to us. Wiesbaden was about 18 degrees when we left, and in the space of a few hours the temperature dropped to about 8 degrees. The weather was also quite nasty, and we got to drive through low cloud, mist, rain and even sleet! We had booked into the Hotel Tyrolis, hoping for a taste of true Tyrolese hospitality.
The room was nice, if a little dark (covering all the walls in wood will do that!), and we had a nice balcony with a good view. After a futile search for menthol cigarettes in the town, we dropped into the hotel restaurant for dinner. Unfortunately, the Tyrolese hospitality didn’t seem to extend that far, as the server was quite grumpy. We found the food plain and boring, but a few glasses of wine soon banished those thoughts from our minds.
The next morning I snapped a few pics from the balcony before we left the hotel. The view out of the back of the hotel was gorgeous stretching over an alpine valley. The hotel was a very typically Tyrolean design, and covered in gorgeous flowers. The day seemed to be a lot nicer, and we hoped that we wouldn’t be driving through sleet and snow again.
We didn’t really have many plans in Austria; it was just a required stop on the way to Italy. But when I looked at the local attractions and discovered that Swarovski Kristallwelten was only a few kilometres away, I knew we couldn’t pass up visiting it. I’ve always loved the sparkliness of Swarovski crystals and how they look in jewellery and was fascinated to see what the Kristallwelten had to offer. We drove over and found it easily and booked onto an English tour.
I had expected it to be more of how the crystals were fabricated, but instead it was a semi-interactive exhibit showing the crystals in different formats. The first stop was a hall with re-interpretations of famous works of art, utilising Swarovski crystals. In the same room were the largest and smallest crystals ever cut by Swarovski, the one shown below also being the largest in the world. In this room we learned just how hard it is to take photos of crystals, the refracting light messed up a lot of shots for both of us!
My favourite stop on the tour had to be the Crystal Dome – a large silver dome covered on the inside with many different crystals. These 590 ‘mirrors’ create a visual and acoustic marvel, including the point at the centre that converts a whisper into a shout – something I found out by accident.
The final stop on the tour was the shop and it was enormous! Every type of product that you could conceive of could be purchased there (if you had enough money!). I was particularly taken by the crystal champagne glasses, but at over €400 for four, they were out of my budget, so I had to settle for some jewellery instead…
Leaving the Kristallwelten we headed south and gradually the weather began to improve as we dropped in altitude. After three hours we were out of the Alps and the Brenner Pass and into the flat landscape of Northern Italy. The temperature rose significantly and soon reached 28°C – a hurried pit-stop was required to shed some of the layers we had put on that morning!
The drive started in cold weather alongside sheer cliff faces and slowly these grew smaller and smaller as we descended. Eventually the last ridge of mountains gave way to the dusty green flatlands. It was easy to tell when we moved from Austria into Italy as the barriers at the side of the motorway suddenly turned from shining aluminium into rusty steel!
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