I guess I should blog about our epic coach holiday to Austria!

Day 1: Left St Margaret's Bus Station, Leicester at about 8am. We went with Skills on a month old luxurious supercoach! Drove to Folkestone and caught the train to France. It was a very tight fit to get the coach into the train. I've only been a passenger on the train, never driven on, so that was interesting. Then we drove through France, Belgium, the Netherlands and into Germany. I hadn't realised there were so many windfarms around. One of the first things we saw in Germany was the karting centre Michael Schumacher built for his village. And we went past the Nurburgring, too. Stopped the night at a Mercure hotel in Bonn.

Day 2: Drove through Germany, went past Hockenheim, and into Austria. Went through some really long tunnels - some were over 10km I think. The mountains are amazing the first time you see them. Giant snow covered things. After many hours we reached our holiday hotel, the Hotel Kajetansbrucke. It's 2km outside the village of Pfunds. We were supposed to be staying at another hotel but that one had closed since the manager was ill. So this hotel had especially opened to take our coach party and one other that had been there before us. It had an authentic Tirolean atmosphere, by which I think it meant lots of dead animals on the walls. Anyway, the room was very cosy and it had a balcony looking out over some people's back gardens (with cows!).

Day 3: Trip to the Bernina Express! Woo! We drove through Switzerland, stopping briefly at St Moritz, then into Italy, to Tirano. We had a little while there to get lunch (yummy Pancetta panini and spagnola ice cream. Yum yum yum. Then we caught the Bernina Express. It's a special train with panoramic carriages, with lots of glass so you can see the spectacular scenery. We travelled through the snowy mountaintops, seeing beautiful lakes, quaint villages, even a glacier! It's an amazing train ride if you ever get the chance to go there. Then the coach took us back to the hotel...

Day 4: Today we went back into Italy. Lots of fruit and vineyards everywhere! First stop was a flooded village. The onyl thing left when the reservoir was created was a medieval clock tower. Then we stopped at Merano, which was a bit of pointless stop, but pleasant enough. Bought some cold pizza at some sort of bakery. It was very hot weather. Then we went to Vipiteno to look at the shops, though unfortunately we arrived when they were closed for their long lunch. We found one shop open that had interesting bits and I bought a Murano glass bracelet. Thought I should get some sort of souvenir. And it was a very pretty place to walk around. We bought some pasta to bring home, too, since it seemed like a good thing to do when in Italy. On the way back to the hotel we had a photo stop at the Brenner Bridge, and went past Innsbruck where I recognised the ski jump from a cake on 'Ace of Cakes'. That's terrible, isn't it?

Day 5: Had a tour around Pfunds, with an English lady who'd lived there 45 years. It was most interesting since you learnt about about how people lived there, rather than just seeing old houses and things. She led some of us up to see Mini Fundus, which is a model village. Not many people did that part of the tour. Then we went to one of the supermarkets and bought random things. Ate lunch at the hotel. Didn't do much else really. We had been intending to walk around more but Rob's hayfever had reached terrible proportions and all he was doing was sneezing. In the evening there was a 'peasant style' buffet dinner, which was tasty. And also entertainment, though we ran away from the yodelling accordion man. :)

Day 6: Start of our journey back to England. Back into Germany, where we stayed at a Mercure hotel at Koln.

Day 7: Germany, Netherlands, Belgium and France again. We stopped in Belgium at a chocolate factory that seems to be a favourite stopping place for English coaches! We had to stop because the wing mirror fell off the coach and he needed to fit his spare. Took quite a while. He had a few problems over the trip, it could have gone a lot smoother... Oh, we went past another motor racing track - Spa. At Calais we looked round the terminal a bit before catching the train. In England the traffic was terrible, so it took ages to get back to Leicester.

All in all I enjoyed it, saw lots of interesting things, visited lots of countries. And it was very cheap. The coach was comfy, had films to watch and hot and cold drinks served by a hostess. Both she and the driver were really friendly and entertaining. The driver was called Winny, if you've ever travelled with him on a trip you'll know just how entertaining he is! Oh, and we won a bottle of wine for answering three questions. I'm really good at winning wine in competitions, maybe it's because I don't really want the wine. Who knows? :)

There are some photos on my Facebook: here.