Contiki - Austria

Day 7 – July 30th, 2007
Venice, Italy to Tyrol, Austria

We are off to Austria this morning, but we are making a special stop at the Swarovsky Crystal Factory. The show rooms are amazing! And there is a lot of reasonably priced stuff to purchase! It was cool to take a stop here and see this precious jewelry at its finest. We arrived in Tyrol, Austria right after lunch time, and went to this place called Feel Free Rafting. This is it, it is finally time for the part of the trip I’ve been waiting for!!! Lets do some rafting! So we all put on our rafting gear. We had head to toe wetsuits, waterproof jackets, water booties for our feet, and helmets. We were quite a sight to be seen! Me and a couple other people decided that we wanted our raft to be daring and adventurous and we wanted to go swimming! So we got a group of people together that happened to be all girls, and went up to one of the rafts to wait. Our raft guide was named Mike and he was so energetic and fun. I think we got the best guide, and we are all so excited about it! The rafting was out of this world. Ryan told us before we got out there that this literally would be one of those “Pinch me” am I really here, moments. And I really did pinch myself. The scenery was amazing with the Alps and the beautiful grass covered hills with just the cutest houses placed precisely on the hills. And the snow covered Alps in the background. Mike got us to flip our raft, and do a raft wheelie, and all stand up on the edges of the raft at the same time! It was crazy but absolutely amazing. After we got all warmed up, we headed to Hopfgarten where we will be staying at a special Contiki stopover. It’s a hotel owned by Contiki, so only Contiki travelers stay there. The Contiki staff is very fun and friendly and cook us meals and even do laundry if we need it! I can’t wait to relax here tonight!

Day 8 – July 31st, 2007
Tyrol, Austria

Today we got to sleep in a bit and it was amazing! They we had a big breakfast to get us ready for our big bike ride! The ride began at our Contiki Hotel, and was led by professional bikers. It was a 25 km bike ride, which translates to about 15 miles! We rode all throughout the Austrian hills. The scenery was amazing, and we got to stop for water and rest. We rode to lunch about 2/3 through the bike tour and had an amazing Austrian lunch. We had bratwurst, baked potatoes, cabbage salad, and lemonade. It was the best food I have had yet in Europe! After the bike tour we got to keep the bikes until 5pm, so we decided to ride into town and check out some of the gift shops. Tyrol is a very small cute town and made the perfect setting for a relaxing afternoon.