Brenner

This is the story of our father/son trip to celebrate Lachlan's finishing high school. The plan was to ride around 15 (or so) countries in 17 (or so days) on our BMW R1150GS motorbike. As it turned out we skipped a couple of countries and came home a ...

... don't encourage tourists to camp in the wild or national parks, are potentially missing out on the tourist dollar. 20.7.06 Brenner Pass Tyrol, Austria After a frustratingly slow start we headed for the Tyrolean Alps. It was a hot day of 36° ...

... delay in Italy along with Slovenia and Munich. We left Venice in 30 deg heat at about 11am and arrived in Steinach am Brenner at 5.30pm in 8 deg 'heat', not to mention the pouring rain!!  I’m sure Christchurh would be having better weather!! ...

... then went to the train station where we found that we could get a train for 9 euros per person back to Innsbruck from the town of Brenner, where we were. The train left at 2:30, and that gave us an hour to get some lunch and try and find an Italian flag. ...

oops ...

... and I will have about 6 holiday homes of Mikaylas to visit in our old age!!  After a brief photo stop in Matrei am Brenner we headed in the direction of Innsbruck, a short distance away. The first thing that strikes you as you enter Innsbruck is the ...

... we drove through more tunnels than in the rest of our life put together! Eventually we reached Innsbruck and swung south onto the Brenner Pass, a long slow climb to the Italian border at the summit.  Then a long drift downhill to Bolzano.  We ...

... go to Venice. Trains ran on time and we had a compartment to ourselves for the 8 hour trip. Travelled through Innsbruck and the Brenner Pass into Italy which meant lots of tunnels (one we were inside for 10 minutes !) but we didn't see any snow. Arrived ...

Spontan entschlossen wir uns aufgrund der Wetterverhältnisse eine Tag früher aufzubrechen. Wir landeten im schönen Stubaital in Tirol, wo wir am nächsten Tag bei schönstem Wetter mit Wandern, Sommerrodelbahn, Wasserfallbesichtigung, ...

... night!  Today we got to sleep in and enjoy a nice morning with our host families.  We went to Max Brenner for a delicious chocolate lunch!  Almost everything in the restaurant is made out of chocolate so that was a pretty amazing experience ...

... restaurant chain which specialises in chocolate dishes. Max Brenner was founded in 1996 in Israel, by Max Fichtman and Oded Brenner using a conjunction of their names.  Their chocolate pizza was featured on a February 2011 segment of Food Networks ...

... there to save money for her trip. A lot of the trek was spent with her and an Australian girl reciting the Max Brenner menu and making me hungry for chocolate. After much consideration, I had a warm chocolate cake with strawberries. It was gooey in ...