This morning we left Venice to head to Hopfgarten, Austria. Austria is a country that I’ve been really looking forward to seeing. Like Switzerland, it is supposed to be very relaxing, peaceful, and scenic.
We boarded the coach early and headed off on what we thought would be a somewhat short travel day. When I say short, I mean shorter than our normal full day traveling days. The bus rides are LONG! There are days that you are on the bus from 8:30AM til 5:00PM, just like our ride from Venice to Austria! Yes, you do make a few service stops along the way, but you still spend most of your day on the bus.
Once we got into Austria we stopped to drop off everyone that was going on the Contiki “White Water Rafting” optional. As I said in the last blog, I decided to opt out of this excursion due to finding out that it wasn’t full out white water rafting, it was supposed to be more relaxed, cruising down the river and paddling here and there. I would personally rather do white water rafting later this summer on my own and spend the extra few euro for the experience of some real hardcore rafting in Switzerland or something.
Everyone hopped off of the bus and were instructed about all of the rules and all that. They all jumped into their wetsuits, and safety equipment and headed down to the rivers edge. We all followed them down to take photos, some pointed fingers and made fun of each other due to how funny some of them looked in their suits.
Everyone that wasn’t rafting headed back to the bus for a 20 minute ride to the destination of the rafters. We arrived and there was a cafe, volleyball, and restrooms, and internet available that costs 1 Euro for 10 minutes, which I thought was pretty outrageous. Unfortunately for the people who chose not to raft, we had to sit there at this cafe and burn 2 hours of our day waiting for the rafters to get back and for everyone to eat afterwards. Another downfall of Contiki. If you choose not to do some of the optionals, you really have nothing else to do. Doesn’t sound like too much of an “optional” to me. Instead you have to sit there and do nothing when you could be out exploring the city.
After everyone was back and ready to go we headed off to the hotel in Hopfgarten, Haus Lukas. Haus Lukas is a contiki run hotel located in the heart of Hopfgarten, if there is a “heart” of Hopfgarten. You can walk across the town in 10 minutes. It’s a very small ski village with absolutely nothing to do in the summer. If you don’t want to participate in the Contiki Optionals, the only thing that I would really recommend is to rent a mountain bike on your own, like I did. Other than that, there is one bar, one small beer hall, one pizza shop, one salon, one church, one post office, 3 small supermarkets, 3 Tabac’s (convenience stores), one train station and a trout farm.
Our room was okay, very basic as usual. Not that I expect much more than what we received. We had to ask for an extra towel due to there only being one left in the room. The shower and toilet were separate like our hotel in London. Quite odd if you ask me. The room with the toilet had a door on it. The room with a shower in it did NOT! Literally, it was an open arch way with clear shower doors inside (see below). It’s not like I have a girlfriend along on the trip with me, if that was the case it would be somewhat acceptable. The fact that I have a male room mate and we both need to shower makes the situation a little weird. Anyways, we worked around it and got our showers in. Awkwardly enough…
We had an included dinner tonight that was pretty good actually. There was a free shot of Apple Schnapps before dinner. I’m not a big fan of green apple tasting things so my tour manager went behind the bar and cooked me up something different I guess you could say. He came back with this dark brown looking shot but wouldn’t tell me what it was. I took it down and yelled what in the hell was that? He replied, Devil’s Brew. It’s the type of liquor that you light on fire. 100 Proof…
We also celebrated Lucyanne’s birthday during dinner and it got pretty loud at a few different points through out the night. After dinner we headed off to one of the only bars in town called the Silver Bullet. The beers were fairly cheap at around 3.40 for a tall local beer called Fohrenburger. It was really good, surprisingly. Bruno, Vanessa, Ryan, and I shot some pool and had a great time. We went home a little after midnight and got some good sleep for tomorrows adventures, or lack of.
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