Day 17

We stayed at the Mercure Hotel Frankfurt Eschborn Helfmann Park, which included breakfast.  I had a jam on toast, croissant and two chocolate pastries, mum had scrambled eggs with a coupe of potatoes, a bowl of fruit pieces and also 2 chocolate pastries.  We then grabbed our bags and hopped back on the bus, to start our journey to Austria.  On the way we had a comfort stop, at some service center, and got a packet of Oreos, to eat while traveling, only because it had a Minecraft movie on it.

We stopped for lunch in Ulm, our last stop in Germany.  Mayra walked us to the markets where we had free time to walk around and get some lunch.  Mum had curried wurst and a bun, while I had a burger, from one of the many food trucks at the market.  We wandered around a bit, saw yet another church then went to an Aldi Store, a supermarket chain store throughout Europe, and bought some more snacks to have on the bus.  

As we were getting closer to Austria, the Alps came into view.  The mountains were stunning.  We saw someone parachuting, some castles and some cute little buildings.  During the ride we had a game of TV Trivia.  There were only 2 teams of 4 playing.  We joined up with a Texan couple and called ourselves 'Texan Kiwis'.  Mayra played a few lines of the theme song of a TV show and we had to say what show it was.  At the end both teams got 25/31, so she had to play a few tie-breakers until someone won.  We eventually won with the theme music from 'Walking Dead'.  We finally crossed the border into Austria, in the middle of a tunnel, and had a photo stop at a beautiful lake called 'Blindsee'.  I also took a photo of our bus and a shop there.

When we arrived in Innsbruck, Mayra walked us to the 'Swarovski Crystal World' where we had to climb some crystal stairs and looked at all the amazing things made from these crystals.  There was also some expensive 'bling' there along with a crystal 'waterfall' that went down two floors.

We then had some free time to look around Innsbruck.  It is a very pretty town, surrounded by the Alps.  I also saw a random fish hanging from a building and a sausage dog.

We opted to do a Dinner and Tyrolean Show, which was pretty good.  We had Pumpkin soup, a beef dish and a lovely dessert during the show.  The show included men slap dancing, women yodeling, a band with a few brass instruments, drums, harp, accordion and guitar.  They also had some long horns, bells, cowbells, xylophone and zither.  It was very entertaining.  At the end they played a short song for each country that was represented there that night, most of whom were American or Australian.  For New Zealand they played Pokarekare Ana.  Then it was time to go to our hotel for the night.