Prague and Central Europe 2017: Grossglockner and Innsbruck

I must apologise early. We took almost 500 photos today – I’ve managed to cut it down to less than 10% of that so you should be grateful. We left Lienz this morning for the 3 hour drive to Innsbruck over the Grossglockner Pass. It took us 6 hours to drive the 65 kilometres of the Grossglockner Pass. We’ve never seen anything like this road. Hundreds of hairpin bends and around everyone was an incredible scene laid out in front of us. Towering mountains, glaciers, forest, waterfalls, wide roads but made scary by some of the crazy drivers. The barriers, apparently built to ensure the safety of motorist were sometimes just 4 inch gutters, sometimes just rocks spaced about 5 metres apart, sometimes rotting timber fences, maybe an electric fence, sometimes just fresh air. We did stop a number of times, sometimes we could get out of the car and just shake our heads at the beauty of the scenery. Sometimes Pam couldn’t get out or she would have fallen a couple of hundred metres down a cliff. Incredible driving road. The temperatures from Lienz to the top dropped from about 25 degrees to 8 degrees with the wind shield factor decreasing that even more. There was snow in all the crevices and along the road.

When we left Lienz the sun was struggling to come out and it continued that struggle all day. Sometimes we were under the cloud, sometimes in the cloud and sometimes we looked down on the clouds. The Grossglockner is 3798 metres high; the visitors centre is 2504 metres above sea level (Toowoomba is 600metres, Kosciuszko is 2224) and looks down on the Pasterze Glacier which has its’ source in the mountains.

We arrived in Innsbruck, checking at our hotel in Mutters and drove in to the old town of Innsbruck. We have stories but they can wait ….. I’m speechless after the day we’ve had!! The photos are all over the place – I know you’ll forgive me?