Day 3 - On to Westendorf

I have to say that the next couple of days were some of my most favorite times of the trip. I have many, many favorite parts of the trip. But being surrounded by such majestic vistas - was awe inspiring and magnificent. At times the mountains were so beautiful, I just wanted to cry.

We left Salzburg and headed to the town of Westendorf where our group of 100 would be split between 4 chalets. We didn't stop on the way - and so, again I settled for photo's thru the windows of the moving coach. Although they are not crystal clear - the majesty and power displayed in the following photos was humbling. How small we are - in comparison of our Great and Awesome God.

We entered the town of Westendorf and waited for our Chalet assignments.

We were divided up between 4 Pensions (family run boarding house/chalets). There was the Jakobwirt (where we all had our dinner meal together). Most of the girls stayed there.

The Theresiana - Where Jacob and many of the other boys stayed.

My roommate and I stayed at the Rainer (with mostly college age boys)

No elevators there, so we had to carry our bags up to the top floor - thankfully some of the guys took pity on 'us old ladies' and helped us carry our bags up 3 flights of the winding staircase. When we got to the top of the stairs - we saw this window - that went clear into someone's bathroom. There was a clear view of the shower (and anyone who was in it) and we found out later that one could sit on the toilet and wave to everyone on the stairs. Yes - that was our room. And there was no curtain over the window - so we had to take one of the bath towels and cover it up that way. Of course, we were then short one bath towel, because we couldn't find our owner.

It was a beautiful and comfortable place though. Here is the balcony that our screen door opened up on to. We were the last room - so the brown chair belonged to us.

Across the way (from the balcony) we saw some other Pensions (the 4th one - which I think was the Elizabeth - that had more girls in it) was behind this building pictured here.

And the straight away view from our little balcony was this. I was sad that there was so much cloud cover. And the next day, the weather was forcasted to be pretty rainy all day. But we had 2 full days ahead of us here in this mountainous wonderland. I had hopes that the sun would shine at some point.

Our dinner was at the Jakobwirt Pension and then they had arranged for a dance party for all of the students in the basement of one of restaurants. I think the kids had a great time - Jake isn't a dancer, but he enjoyed being with the group. It was off to bed after a long day - and another long day was ahead of us.

On the morrow we were headed to the top of the Rattenburg Glacier - for a snowball fight, we were told. We looked forward to another fantastic experience in Europe!