day fourteen: Venice to Hopfgarten

The next morning we jumped on the coach and headed into Austria. The drive was amazingly beautiful. I even took a picture of the scenic views at our service stop that day. I think I had another baguette and some Coke. Oh and I bought a can of Pringles. Pringes were the snack of choice for our tour and we probably consumed five or six cans a day (as a bus).



Jase played "The Sound of Music" over the bus speakers as we entered Austria. We also had a ridiculous amount of traffic (there was some kind of detour we had to take, so I'm not sure what was going on), which made us late for white water rafting. When we finally got there, we got our quick safety speech and donned all the necessary gear: wetsuit (I think they said the water 6 degrees Celsius! freezing!), jacket, life vest, booties, and helmet. We divided into groups and got into our rafts.



My raft had in it: me, Tash, Meaghan, Jase, the three Koreans, and our river guide. Rafting was sooo much fun; better than the time I went with my family in Utah. The rapids themselves were good, but more importantly it was more fun to be out there with all these people (our raft and the three other rafts would have water fights with each other when we were close enough) and to be there in beautiful Austria on a day when the weather couldn't have been more perfect. One of the first things we did in the raft was practice getting people out of the water and back in the raft, and also practicing how to let someone else get you back in as well. This meant that we had to jump into the freezing cold river. And it was cold! I made the mistake of actually "jumping" in and not just jumping in right next to the raft which meant I had to swim back to the raft. Oh well. It was invigorating. About half way through, the guide said we could take a break and swim for a couple minutes if we wanted to. We thought he was kidding. So Jase got up and started dumping the Koreans over the side. And then Tash pushed me in and I dragged her in after me. It was cold, but lots of fun. At the end of the trip, the guide showed us how to do a trick where everyone sits at the front of the raft and you tilt it up 90 degrees. It was really cool, until he purposely flipped us over. And then it was just cold. But hilarious.


After rafting we headed straight to our Contiki village in Hopfgarten. The place was pretty cute, complete with little flowers along the windowsills.

next day...