day fifteen: Austrian Tyrol

The next day we slept in a little bit longer than normal (I think we got up at 9am) and got ready for the mountain bike ride. I hadn't ridden a bike in quite some time, so it took me a few minutes to get used to it again and remember how to shift and everything. On the first hill I slipped off the pedals and my right calf slammed into the gears. It didn't really hurt at the time, but when we made our first stop I realized that my leg really hurt and looked down and saw blood gushing out (ok, not really gushing, but it was all up and down the back of my leg and didn't look too pretty). I got some band-aids which helped slightly, but I do have an extra souvenir from my trip that I wasn't planning on (a cute little scar).



Me and some of the other girls decided to take the "shortcut" to the BBQ lunch place. We hiked up a hill, took some nice pictures and got to the lunch place really early. So we decided to bike to the town down the road and look for an ATM machine and some postcards.



It was the cutest little town ever! We wanted to stay longer but we had to get back so we wouldn't miss lunch (which we almost did). When we got back to the Contiki place after the bike ride, they told us that we could keep our bikes for a few more hours. So a bunch of us decided to ride into Hopfgarten to look around and get some things we needed at the grocery store and post office. It was a short little ride (although Vanessa ran into a wall because she thought some truck was going to hit her - he was nowhere close, by the way - it was hilarious) and we eventually found the post office and a place to get some food. We had some really good chicken schnitzel there. It was a really tiny town (but really cute) so there wasn't much to do.



I headed back a bit earlier than everyone else so I could take a nap before dinner. By this point, my sore throat had turned into a cold (the dreaded "Contiki cough"), but I was pretending that nothing was wrong. Although it really wasn't that bad - not until after the trip anyway.

After dinner, a few of us walked into town with Dave the bus driver and went to some local bar. More people showed up later as the karaoke was starting. We played a bit of pool and watched people make fools of themselves at karaoke. It was a pretty fun night. The walk back afterwards was really nice: the weather was just perfect - not too cool, not too warm; and the sky was clear and we could see thousands of stars. It was the perfect end to a beautiful day.

next day...