Innsbruck

Today Sarah and Glenn have gone to work and we are having a rest day - although sometimes resting feels like hard work because we have just returned from a walk to the local shopping centre where we managed to do just three things: a) find a hole in the wall so we could get some Swiss francs - we only had euros
b) spend some francs on a salad roll and a coffee - luckily the girl serving us spoke English
c) spend some more francs on some items in the supermarket - we managed to annoy the checkout chick by not pre-weighing our fruit and veg

We've had a fantastic weekend in the Bavarian alpine region of Germany about five hours east of Zurich. Glenn was able to interpret for us but that became increasingly more difficult because he lost his voice completely (the remnant of a cold), and Sarah wasn't with us because she had to work on Friday. The funniest was Phil trying to explain that he just wanted a mug of hot water - no coffee, no tea, no lemon. The first attempt resulted in a glass of tepid tap water.

On Friday we headed out on a motorway that followed Lake Zurich and then along various valleys, several toll points, border checkpoints and through numerous tunnels to Innsbruck. The longest tunnel was about 15 kms long. The snow-capped mountains were astonishingly beautiful.

We had lunch in the centre of Innsbruck, the capital city of the Tyrol region of Austria. Traffic is excluded from the narrow streets, cafes abound and we wandered through the town and along the river admiring the lovely old buildings. It suffered badly from bomb attacks in WW2 but the old town looks great today and is a popular destination because of festivals and winter sports as well. I was sorry to leave.