Boondock Puffins

One of the joys of keeping in touch with old friends is that when they move away, you can go to visit! When we drove from Italy through to Slovenia, we’d driven by Villach, which rang a bell as one of Eliza’s friends from school had moved there years ago. Once we’d driven past (stupidly) we sent a message and promised a stop off on the way back.

We arrived on Monday evening and enjoyed a detailed exchange of updates from the last decade. Most notably was that we learnt that in Austria, people move WITH their kitchens – this was such a foreign concept for us who were fascinated with the concept of taking the whole set up (cupboards and all), not just the appliances!

Before dinner, we went on a small walk to see the views from the top of the nearest hill and were rewarded with a spectacular sunset over the surrounding area.

For supper, we got to see the wonders of an InstantPot. We’ve never come across this before, but we can confirm that it makes an excellent curry, and may well be a good way forward for us if we have another tiny kitchen in the future. For the moment though, Tom loves to cook interesting concoctions and so we will not remove that joy.

As it turned out, our friends have a weekly habit of taking Tuesday morning to go out skiing. Naturally, as we had our ski stuff with us, we joined. When asked about our ability, we both were a bit cagey, particularly when it was pointed out that most runs were red/black. In the end, it seems that small Austrian resorts are a bit more generous on their ratings of slopes so we had an epic time, feeling like very accomplished skiers!

Arriving early in the morning, we queued for a day ski pass and then enjoyed the quick cable car ride up from the valley – this treated us to some spectacular views.

Once out at the top, we hopped on a luxurious chair lift. Seriously, you don’t know luxury until you’ve been to Gerlitzen – heated seats AND an electronic cover. Never have we been so warm on a cold day on the chair lift before.

After an excellent morning of whizzing around up and down the slopes, we called it a day at lunchtime (when our friends went to work) and we continued on our journey heading steadily back towards Tignes.