Day 192 - Why is Switzerland so expensive?

Bludenz (Austria) to Rothrist (Switzerland) - Ibis Hotel

After breakfast (served on a beautiful outdoor terrace with a lovely view of the Austrian Alps) we headed back to Liechtenstein to recover our card. We finally spoke to someone at the post office who could help, but they said we would have to wait an hour! After some grumbling from K, they suggested they could post it to us - very useful! They eventually got the picture and opened the machine for us, after which we finally managed to leave the country we couldn't afford!

We drove on to the beautiful Switzerland city of Lucerne (no, we didn't see any hay). After walking through the town for a while, we caught the world's steepest cog railway up Mt. Pilatus, passing cows grazing the steep hillside with huge bells around their neck, it was all very reminiscent of Heidi, it would be amazing to see it with snow. It was a beautiful day, from the top we had the most amazing views of the Swiss Alps and Lucerne. There was snow on some of the peaks in the distance, but none where we were.

Day 191 - Into the clouds

Innsbruck to Bludenz - Schlosshotel Dorfinger

Innsbruck has hosted two Winter Olympics, so we had to visit the Olympic ski jump which wasn't far from our guest house, quite an amazing sight! We caught the funicular to the top, it was a little scary looking from the top and thinking how talented you would have to be to manage that slope - especially when the view towards town off the end of the jump is the town cemetry! We walked down and were very lucky to see someone practicing on the jump, it was covered in a plastic material and watered before use.

After that we headed into town and took the Nordkette funicular and cable car up the mountain. They view was fantastic on the way up, but unfortunately when we finally reached our destination we were in the clouds, so there wasn't much to do other than head back down the mountain.

Now finished with Austria (we thought) we drove into the tiny country of Liechtenstein, with a vague plan of spending the evening in Valduz. However Liechtenstein decided it didn't like the likes of us! First of all it was impossible to find any accommodation priced even close to what we thought was reasonable. We had two cups of coffee so we could use wifi to do some investigation on the internet - $12 later we realised that we wouldn't be staying in Valduz, instead we found some nice accommodation in Bludenz, not too far over the border in Austria! But Liechtenstein hadn't finished with us yet, while trying to get some money from the ATM it decided to swallow our card - meaning we had to come back the next day to retrieve it.

On the positive side though the accommodation we had booked in Bludenz was booked out, so we were upgraded to a 4 star hotel.