Arriverderci Italy
This next morning the rain had stopped and we drove for a couple of hours through the beautiful Italian alps before crossing the Brennar Pass into Austria – and (this was a great shock to the system!) from Italy’s 40 degree temperature into Austria’s 20 degrees!
We’ve been driving through some of the most awesome scenery – picture postcard beautiful – mountains (some with snow still on them); chalets with their window boxes full of geraniums and summer annuals, and cows wearing their cowbells. The only bad part (for me at least) was that the further into the alps we went, the colder it got, with the temperature falling to 13 deg C. You tend to feel a bit silly wearing shorts, tops and thongs when everyone else is wearing jackets and long pants etc. We reached Innsbruck by mid afternoon and spent a few hours there. The sun was out and it was a bit warmer which was good. Innsbruck is a lovely city, surrounded by the alps.
One thing about driving through the alps is that you go through lots of tunnels. I’d read about the tunnels, but I hadn’t realized there were so many of them. Generally they vary in size from 1km – 5kms (and they have little pictures along the length of the tunnel showing a stick figure running and some flames, and a distance is marked indicating how far it is to the nearest exit in the event of an emergency, which is very comforting). However, there is a new tunnel through the Alberg Pass and it’s the tunnel, the mother of them all! – 14kms long (well 13.9 to be exact) and there are exits at either end, and only one emergency exit about 3km from one entrance! There’s no other emergency exit along the length of the tunnel, but, there are lots of pictures showing how far it is to the entrances in the event of an emergency. Neither of us are claustrophobic, but we were both glad to get out of that tunnel.
We stopped the night in a little village called Braz staying in a little gueshouse which is typically Austrian Tyrol chalet style – very pretty with its flower baskets, wood trim, lovely gardens. Thomas, our host was a nice man and the guesthouse had been run by his family for over 100 years.
