St. Anton, Austria

  Innsbruck, Austria
Tuesday, September 11, 2007

St. Anton AUSTRIA

From Lisa:

Another one of those postcard-like little towns tucked between the mountains! It was truly another "pick this place from the map" stops and we couldn't have been more fortunate. When we stopped at the outdoor information booth we saw many, many places to stay advertised, but the one thing we really needed was wi-fi access to get the NFL pass to see the first week of football. We knew there was no chance on Austrian TV, but Yahoo has a program for people not in the US to see all the games live (a little tough since we are 6 hours ahead of EST, but still doable for die hard football fans like us!). We didn't know which place to pick and were going to keep driving when this gentleman who'd been sitting in his car came over and gave us a detailed book with all of the places in the area and everything they offered.
We picked the HAUS PIRKER (www.pirker.com) and what a wonderful place it was! Jugen checked us in, even though it was his "sports Sunday" and Dorle took such good care of us every morning for breakfast, it felt as though we were right at home. They even let us invade their breakfast area to get work done on the computer for many hours while we were there! We hiked until our legs ached and saw so much of this beautiful town. If you ever get the urge to surround yourself with soaring mountains and the smell of fresh fir trees, accented by the sound of a roaring waterfall, St. Anton is definitely the place to do it.   

From Cheryl:

This part of the trip has definitely had a focus on all things outside!  We are not looking for large cities with Museums and Monuments and tour buses, we are now looking for those places that we can feel nature and just take in all the beauty it has to offer.   St. Anton certainly was the place to do it.  We found Switzerland and Austria to be similar in that they are made for outdoor enthusiasts!  We did a lot of hiking and saw some beautiful things.  I wish we could post every picture we took but if we did we might just blow up the entire WWW!  One day we saw some beautiful and gentle horses called Haflingers.  We were able to pet them on our walk and Lisa decided she would bring apples to them the next day..  Well, bring apples we did, but they were no longer by the fence so we took a trail that actually went through their grazing area.  How cool that was.  We were on the inside with cows and horses just a few meters away from us. 

Lisa brought out the apple bag and one of the gentle horses started walking over toward her.  I was taking some pictures of the whole event, somehow knowing I did not want to be the one carrying the FOOD bag!

The first, gentle one!

  Shortly after the first horse came over the others started to take notice that there was food involved.  Well, they wanted in on the action as well!  

He brought his friends!!

 First just a few more, them all of them made their way over.. and here is Lisa with just a few apple slices in a bag!  They really were gentle, but when there is a battle for pole position at the food bag, there is always a little pushing and bumping going on.

Getting a little pushy!

I was taking pictures the whole time until I heard Lisa say "Help Me!"

HELP ME!!

Now, I looked over and she did not really need help, just getting nervous because they were starting to gather en mass!  I clicked away, knowing that this was going to get good!! 

Well, the apples now gone Lisa thinks she can just walk away.  Uh huh..  They were still hungry!  I kept telling her to put the food bag away, but she needed to get that last slice out for them!  Okay, food is gone and Lisa tries to move quickly away from the still very hungry horses!  She did not do too bad as she found some nice trees to get behind,

Yep, good hiding spot!

 but they still followed!  After that experience, she decided that seeing the horses from a distance was a MUCH better way to enjoy them!!  

Much better from a distance

I never laughed so much in my life!!!