I know it sounds boring, but yet another flawless day of cycling (how quickly they forget the rains!). After our "vacation" day in Salzburg, we got a good early start out of the city. Since Salzburg is fairly small, the ride out of town was simple and included an underground tunnel underneath the airport (whee!). From there we basically followed the same road all day with only a few intersections that we needed to think about (follow the signs to Innsbruck).

We knew that we were heading off into the Alps, but we didn't have any adequate maps or route descriptions to tell us what the road would be like, so we rode in constant dread of the huge hill that would loom in front at any moment. And turn by turn new dramatic spires and peaks arose, then as if by magic the roadway would snake between them, often going down instead of up. It wasn't possible, but it was. The book broke the ride from Salzburg to Kitzbühl into 3 shortish segments. We circumvented the first, hoped we would make it to the end of the second, and ended up riding to the end of the third. And along the way the true Alps revealed themselves to us. Rocky spires jutting up through rolling hills.

Kitzbül is a resort town: skiiing during the winter, summer sports the rest of the year. They had just completed an open tennis tourney the day we arrived, the elite sports crowd were out in force. We explored the town a little and ended up staying in a gästhaus run by a witchy woman. She threw fits over lots of little things, but the stay ended up being nice enough (despite the drum set in the eating room).

Monday morning we took the gondola up to the middle of the Kitzbühl resort, walked most of the rest of the way up, and had a delicious picnic lunch (ham & cheese & liverwurst). Lounged around until we got cold, then went down. Exciting gondola ride down with front-row seats, views of hang-gliders and parachutes.

Quick afternoon ride took us 30 km to Wörgl. Found a great little gästhaus with a really friendly lady who ended up sending us on our way with a big bag of fresh fruit from her garden (apples and plums). She also made delicious apricot jam.

We met there a German couple from New York who spoke so badly it took me a while to realize they were from NY (1952), not just been there.