This morning we slept in until about 7:30 AM. Stephanie was feeling a little worse with her cold today, but I was much better. She must be about two days behind what I was going through, so today may be her worst day. We got ready and then packed up our suitcases before heading downstairs for breakfast in the restaurant. The Breakfast was included with the room.
Balcony View This Morning
The buffet breakfast was a typical Austrian selection, lots of meats, breads, cheeses, some fruit and yogurts. There were also soft boiled eggs, and a small meat dish that we did not recognize. It looked like some sort of pickled meat.
It was self serve, so we grabbed our plates and helped ourselves. Coffee was a little tricky, there was a machine in a cupboard near the food, but I was not sure if the person there made and served the coffee or if it was also self serve. We finally saw someone else get coffee, and it was obviously self serve, so I headed over the to the machine for my coffee. There were labels on the machine and you just put down a cup under the spout, and pushed a button for your selection. There was button for espresso, cappuccino, cappuccino bold and something that I did not understand. Then there were two sizes of cups above the machine. I just chose the regular size, put it into place and pushed the cappuccino button. It looked like only the frothy milk came out first and then it stopped. I was not sure if it was done, and started to remove my cup, but the lady said to leave it there and wait for the light above the cup to turn from red back to white, indicating the machine was done. A few seconds later, the coffee portion came out of the machine and then the light turned white, so my coffee was now done.
We enjoyed the breakfast and then headed back up to the room to get our two large suitcases and take them downstairs to the car. While we were taking our suitcases to the car, we watched two other cars leave, noting the direction they went, hoping to avoid any problems getting back out to the main highway. We went back upstairs for the remaining backpacks and headed back to the front desk to check out.
After checking out, and with everything loaded into the car, we put the address for the toll station for the High Alpine Road into Google Maps. We left in the same direction as we had seen the two earlier cars take, and we had just gotten down the road to an intersection when another car came to the intersection with us. I let that driver go ahead of us, thinking he would guide us to the bottom and to the highway. It worked, and we found that we were also following the same directions as we were being given by Google Maps. We passed by some of the same places we had seen yesterday when we were slightly lost, and realized that we had just missed a couple of turns, the roads are small, and close together, so when Google Maps told us to turn, we turned on a couple of adjacent, but incorrect roads.
We made it to the highway and only had about 15 minutes before we arrived at the toll booth for the High Alpine Highway. We were taking the highway from south to north, which is the less common direction, most of the cars are on day trips coming here from Salzburg, and they go north to south.
Driving The High Alpine Highway
I had pre-purchased a voucher online this morning and had the QCR code on a PDF file on my cell phone. I thought this would save us some time. When we arrived at the toll booth, the lady had a really hard time reading the QCR code on the phone screen, and then the phone went into sleep mode, so she handed it back to me to put in my unlock code. I made the QCR code a little larger and it finally was scanned. It probably would just have been easier to pay on the spot after all of that delay.
We headed up the highway, occasionally pulling over for scenic overlooks and also to let cars pass that were wanting to drive faster. Many cars use this as a normal road for transportation, so not everyone is here for sightseeing, but most are.
The Pasterze Glacier
We headed up to the scenic overlook called Kaiser-Franz-Josefs-Höhe. It is the largest building on the highway and has a large parking garage. This area is the overlook for the Pasterze Glacier, the largest glacier in the eastern alps. This is also where the highest peak in Austria is located. We had dressed for fairly warm weather today, based on the weather forecast, but at this elevation, it was both breezy and cold. We both had on shorts when we initially left the car in the parking garage, but soon returned to the car to put on long pants and to get a lot more layers warm clothing. It was sunny, but the wind was blowing about 25 mph and it was cold outside.
Stephanie With The Marmots
Better dressed for the cooler weather, we headed back outside to look around the area. We wanted to find a good spot for taking some tripod photos with the glacier in the background, so we headed up to what looked like a trail so we could get away from the buildings that would be in our picture. This was not the trail we wanted, it only went up to a glass covered dome observation building, sponsored by Swarovski, which is an Austrian company. We never could get high enough to be above the buildings, but we did see several Marmots in the area, and Stephanie had fun taking pictures of them.
Marmot
We headed back down the trail to the main viewing area. We went into a large store and Stephanie bought a nice decorative embroidered hand towel. We also saw they sold sandwiches at a deli counter in the store, so we planned on returning later before we left this area to grab a couple of sandwiches for lunch.
I finally found a map of the whole area outside the store we were in and saw where the access was for the trail we had been trying to get to for better pictures of the glacier.
Inside The Tunnels
In order to get to the trail, we first had to walk through six separate tunnels before getting to the open trail. The tunnels had been used for gold mining and other activities over the years. There was information in each tunnels about their history and about the folklore of the mountains. Some tunnels were short, around 150 meters in length, but some were over 250 meters long. They were damp and dripping water from the ceilings. In between tunnels there were openings that were covered with concrete ceilings supported by concrete columns, and in between the columns it was chained off so we could not go outside of the columns and take any tripod picture of us without the columns being in the picture, so we ventured on to the end of the tunnels.
End of Tunnel 6 – So Close to the Trail
Unfortunately, when we got to the end of the sixth tunnel, it was blocked off and was not open to visitors except for “expert alpine climbers with helmets”. There was danger of falling rocks. It did not specifically say we could not go past the chain, but we certainly were not “experts”, and we did not want to take a chance of injury just for a photo. I was disappointed that we had walked this far for nothing, and felt bad for Stephanie having done it with her cold. I just wish we had known from the beginning that the trail was closed before we came this far.
We headed back to the beginning, and once we exited Tunnel No. 1, we did see a sign at the entry point, and at the very bottom of the sign it stated that the trail was closed past the sixth tunnel, we had just not looked past all of the German wording on the sign to notice the warning in English, oh well.
We used the restroom facilities nearby and then went back into the store to purchase our sandwiches before heading back to our car in the parking garage. This was going to be all of the hiking for today, we were both cold and tired.
High Alpine Highway
We exited the garage and headed back down the mountain highway. We found a nice grassy area to pull over onto and eat our lunch in the car. After eating, we continued the drive. There were many scenic overlook areas to pull over and take photos, so we stopped many times. It is difficult to really explain the entire drive, so we will just post a lot of photos.
We did receive a written notice when we went through the toll booth this morning that there was a movie being made somewhere on the drive, and that fake guns were being used in the movie, and might be visible. We think the notice was to make sure people knew it was a movie set and to avoid anyone being startled seeing people walking around with guns. About three quarters of the way into the drive, we saw the area where the movie was being made, they had several pull offs closed for their vehicles and gear. We actually saw some actors carrying assault weapons, it was kind of interesting.
Nearing The End of the Highway
Eventually, we came to the end of the Alpine Highway, it was a very scenic drive and we enjoyed it especially with the great sunny weather. We were glad we were heading north, there was much more traffic heading south, and at several times, there were groups of about 4-5 high end sports cars trying to show off by driving the curvy road very fast. One car came around the corner too fast and went about a third of the way into our lane before getting back under control. Luckily, we were going slow and had plenty of time to move over before we got near them. Apparently, it is a ritual of sorts to drive way to fast on this highway. We won’t even discuss the motorcycles, there were lots of them and they went even faster than the cars, but were much more under control.
Hotel Post Fusch
We only had a 10 minute drive after we exited the northern toll booth before we arrived at our next stop in Fusch an der Glocknerstraße, another really small town. This time the hotel was on the main road and easy to find. We were staying in the Hotel Post Fusch, and were glad that we were able to check in early, arriving around 2:00 PM.
We checked in and headed up to the room with just a portion of our gear. We then went back to the car for the luggage. We wandered around the hotel and found they had a hot tub and sauna in a separate spa area. We asked if it was open and the lady in reception told us yes, it was open, but only by hourly appointments due to Covid restrictions. Only one family of guests could go into the spa room at a time. We booked the first appointment, available at 4:00 PM, and headed to the room to rest a little before the spa appointment.
At 4:00 PM, we went down to the reception desk and the lady told us the sauna and hot tub were heated and ready for use. Once inside, we showered, abiding by the shower before entering rule, and used the sauna first. We were not real comfortable that someone might just walk in on us, we had done that same thing earlier when we had found the sauna, and there was no way to lock the door from the inside. No one did bother us, but we still used towels for coverings in the sauna just in case. We used the hot tub also, but it was not that warm, either by design, or because the high heat we had been in from the Sauna made the water seem cooler. We went back and forth a couple of times and then showered. We only used 45 minutes of our one hour appointment time, but it was enough.
We headed back to the room and took real showers and dressed. The room has a nice balcony, but is rather small otherwise. The bathroom only has a tub shower with a curtain, and a handheld shower, so it was not that easy to use.
New Friends in Fusch an der Glocknerstrasse
After cleaning up, we headed outside to walk through the really small town. There was not much here, mostly just different hotels catering to people like us, basically a stopover for travelling the Alpine Highway. There were no stores to speak of anywhere. Most all of the hotels were also restaurants, probably catering to their guest in most instances.
We headed back to the room and enjoyed some wine on our balcony. The only knock on the hotel, and probably every other one in town is the amount of car noise out on the roadway. All of the places to stay here are located on the main road, so we were sure the noise was just as bad here as any other nearby property. Hopefully, the traffic will die down as it gets later.
Dinner at the Hotel Post Fusch
We headed to the restaurant on the first floor and it was fairly busy. Stephanie had a great Weiner Schnitzel and I had a traditional beef stew with a large potato dumpling. Both were good, but it was the best schnitzel we had so far on the trip, not greasy, and with a very crispy fried coating. We ordered another Apfelstrudel, this one came with a vanilla sauce and whipped cream. I also ordered a cappuccino to go with it. The Apfelstrudel was much better than the one we had last night.
Relaxing on our Balcony
After dinner, we headed back to the room to sit out on our balcony and enjoy a glass of red wine. The traffic had lessened, so it was much quieter. We could see quite a lot of stars in the sky. It seemed later than 8:30 PM, but we were tired. We headed inside the room and Stephanie read while I tried to catch up on the blog, which was behind. We headed off to sleep about 9:45 PM. It had been a good day.