We just had a great day of hiking the alps and then driving through them. Last night we sought out a little hotel that we saw in our guide book. When we asked the help of a local we found out the hotel had burned to the ground. So much for that. We wound up at a nice little ski hotel and had a good night’s sleep. In the morning we got into the car to head over to Kitzbühel, a world famous ski area. When we got there an hour later we had gone through some really splendid scenery. At Kitzbühel we found where we wanted to hike to and then took a gondola up to one peak. We then hiked for an hour and a half to a peak which seamed very far away when we started out. Along the way we saw the snow cat garage. It was really cool; they had every different type of Pistenbully around, from an original 200dw to a 300 winch-cat. We walked through amazing scenery, right out of a storybook. Our destination was a ski lodge situated high on top of another peak. After walking through herds of the most happy cows I’ve ever seen we came to our destination. We got there to find a crowd of Austrians chowing down on some food that would have made me fall down dead from a heart attack (not to mention the gallons of beer they were chugging). We got our little tomato & mozzarella saladswith olive oil. It was exactly what I (and all of us) needed. We got up refreshed and ready to make the run back down to the gondola. We got to the gondola, about an hour and a half later, quite tired and thirsty, but not tired enough to miss looking at the start of the World Cup downhill. This is (by all amounts) the most testing of all downhills. Looking down the start slope, I agreed. We got our picture taken and took off down the gondola. At the bottom our car looked very nice, and we collapsed into the seats. We drove through some really nifty switch-backs, but our (dad’s) speed was slowed by quite a few huge trucks that seemed intent on limiting our speed (and fun factor) to 40mph. We eventually arrived at Mad Ludwig’s castle at about 7:00. I need to get to bed!