Austria: Mountains at their Best

We arrived at night via train from Prague to Austria. Rather than visit another big city, which would be Vienna in this case, we decided to stay in this little ski resort town in the mountains that Joey had read about. I love how varied our trip has been. The town is called Bad Gastein (Bad Gas, dang! as I like to think of the name...hehe. I'm 12, I know.) We would have loved to have skied in Austria, but we were about a month too early. We stayed in an apartment while we were there, so we had lots of space. Like I said before, we arrived at night, so we had no idea where we were in relation to the mountains. But when we awoke the next morning, we had this view from our balcony:

Amazing view from our balcony!

It is so beautiful there! Although the town pretty much shuts down after 8pm (I'm assuming it's much more lively during ski season), it really was a beautiful place. I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves.

Another pretty neat thing we did was swim in the Felsen Therme, which houses pools with water that is heated naturally from springs in the mountains. The water has to actually be cooled first before people can get in it. The water is used for all kinds of therapy, such as athletic injuries and stress. You can go and have access to all of the pools, plus the sauna. There were probably at least six different pools, ranging in size, shape and function. Some were inside and some were out. It was definitely warm water despite the cool weather.


We had to laugh because we went to use the sauna, and it was very....nudist. And swim suits were not optional. Which I thought I might be okay with, but it was just very awkward. It was mainly men, and neither of us knew where to look or where to go. I went into a sauna room, but only two dudes were in there and everything was out...I don't know...it was just weird, ok? So after about five minutes, we vacated the sauna :)


Sauna aside, Austria was absolutely gorgeous! Next stop: Italy!