Daniel Hotel Graz

Stepped out of the train station in Graz, and thought, “Why did I come here?”

Well, my Lonely Planet book described it as a laid back University town with a plethora of galleries and museums. At immediate arrival, I wasn’t convinced.

Found my hotel, and thought “Hmm... not sure about staying here.” Looked around and saw the people wandering around outside the hotel and thought “perhaps I would be ...

After a busy few days in Prague, we headed south for a relaxing time in Graz. It isn't as well known as Salzburg or some other cities in Austria, but this city is actually the country's second biggest, besides Vienna. It is also a very special place because this is where my grandfather (Opa) lived and spent a lot of his youth, and where much of his family has lived for a long time.

We stayed with my Opa's cousin Michaela, who lives in an ...

... river and left Graz to find a small town nearby to park for the night-since we were so close to the border with Slovenia (apparently not a good place to free camp) we wanted to make sure that we found a place in Austria so we didn’t drive too far. Luckily, there was a small town right before the border and we found a Kindergarten parking lot-since it was Saturday night we thought it would fine. It was great except that once we were all settled in ...

... just went down the pedestrian street a ways, and the hotel we would find there was just as nice. So we took his advice and ended up here, which is exactly as he described. The pedestrian street is long and full of interesting shops and restaurants, leading to the centre square. Our hotel is at the far end, where the pedestrian street meets the car-friendly roads. Just above us is a castle. It is illuminated with colourful lights at night.

Bruck an der Mur, Styria, Austria travelingdiva

... 5
Well, well, this is coming to an end. This evening we're taking a flight to Alghero (Sardinia, Italy) so we still have several hours to visit Graz, And you know what? It doesn't rain! Last night it still was pouring with rain but early in the morning it stopped and now it's just cloudy. Well, it's better than nothing!
We go to Jakominiplatz and from there we walk to Kaiser-Josef Platz to see the daily street ...

... defied being taken by Napoleon as was so secure but the city fell when the city was threatened to be bombed. We wandered about the old town's cobblestoned streets and enjoyed the modern sights as well including a bizarre cafe/exhibition centre plonked in the middle of the fast flowing river which you can reach by a walk over bridge. In the afternoon we went on the hunt for a camping store to get gas and replace our electric cam adapter which was left behind at the last campsite ...

... do. The central city was lovely the out skirts reminded us of New Lynn, not so flash. Graz is definetly worth a visit for all that are interested its contempory art gallery. The building looks like a human heart with the major arteriies cut cut off or as the locals call it, 'the friendly alien'. It looks great amongst all the old tiled, stone, brick buildings if the city. in true design style we thought we had better go take a look inside. We weren't in ...

... for long. However, signs of Christmas are popping up all over Graz-lights, a huge tree in the Main Square, and Christmas Markets. These markets are great for shopping for gifts, not to mention the array of food and sweets to eat-my personal favorites being Lebkuchen, gingerbread covered in chocolate, and Schoko-obst, fruit covered in chocolate on a stick-beginning to see a pattern? Of course, with all that food you're bound to ...