Austria & Liechtenstein

A/CH/FL

Thursday morning we woke up to pretty snow falling in Garmisch and we did not want to leave. Much to our dismay the hotel was booked solid that night and couldn't extend us another night, so we had no choice but to pack up and move along. We tossed around a few ideas and then decided on driving south into the Austrian Alps a bit and then heading west towards Switzerland. Switzerland is crazy expensive (we know from experience) and they don't use Euro, they use Swiss Francs, so we wanted to avoid staying there. We found a hotel in Feldkirch, Austria, which is right on the border of Austria, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. It was a perfect spot because it allowed us to get a fabulous scenic drive through the Alps, and let us hop over into Liechtenstein, which has been on our list of places to see for a while. The drive was amazing, breathtaking beauty. After checking into our hotel and dropping off out bag we got back into the car to go to Liechtenstein. It is the 6th smallest country in the world, and the 4th smallest country in Europe. We've now been to three of smallest countries in the world: Monaco, Vatican City & Liechtenstein. We accidentally discovered a winery there and of course we had to go in so I could sample and buy some Liechtenstein wine. They make a pinot noir right there using the royal family's vineyards, so I had to buy a bottle of that! We got to Liechtenstein late in the afternoon, with just a tiny bit of daylight left. We quickly snapped a few pictures of some sights around Vaduz, the capital city, and then headed south so we could say we drove through the entire country from top to bottom. After exiting we crossed the border into Switzerland and took the autobahn back up to the top of Liechtenstein and crossed back in. We wanted to find a place to eat dinner and have local, traditional food. That proved harder than expected! The GPS didn't like Liechtenstein and refused to pull up several addresses for places we'd picked out of a guide we'd grabbed in the tourism office. Then when we would find a place that the GPS liked, we'd drive there only to discover they were closed for the holiday season. I'm not kidding, we tried at least 10 different places before we finally stumbled across one that was actually open! The food was absolutely delicious, but the prices were outrageous and it wasn't exactly our kind of place. We spent twice as much on dinner as we had really wanted to, but it happens...when you are exploring new places sometimes you don't always get lucky or find exactly what you are looking for. At least the food was delicious considering what we had to pay! After dinner we were beat, and Colin was WOUND, a full day in the car had done him NO good at all! We made our way back to the hotel to unwind a little and relax. We woke up Friday morning, had breakfast at the hotel and then reluctantly started the journey home. Shelby has to work on the 31st, so there was absolutely no more stalling, we had to go home! The drive felt like it took forever thanks to some snow and traffic jams. We finally did make it home though and sadly, the snow didn't follow us home.