We Made It

Somehow our travels always take a little more out of us than we think they're going to. We had a simply flight from London to Munich then a two-and-a-half hour drive from Munich to Obertaurn, Austria. Only the lines at Heathrow were amazingly long, the terminal where we landed in the Munich airport was as far from the rental car pick-up as it could be and the last hour of our drive was on a little mountain road in heavy snow. So we arrived here more tired than we thought we would be.

That all being said, it was cool that our plane was full of college students headed to Salzburg with the exact same program that Skip was with when he studied there some 20 years ago. They were all so excited. It was fun to watch them. Then at the rental car place, we ran into four men from Little Rock who were getting ready to see southern Germany, Austria, Switzerland and France. It's a small, small world.And then I got the good end of the deal. Skip was driving, and as we were coming up that little road with snow coming down it looked like we were in the middle of some grand movie set. I wasn't the one worrying about keeping the car on the road, so I could just soak up the scenery. Well, in the midst of the ear pain. I'm getting over a cold and I'm not that stopped up, but somehow the combination of the plane descent and the high altitude (we're actually higher than Denver) has caused some terrible ear pain. I've been drinking tons of water and I think it will clear up by tomorrow.

We've got Maddie all signed up for ski school. She's excited now, but we're waiting until she's spent a day in the cold on the slopes to commit for the week. She's a little annoyed with me and Skip because we're going to ride with her on the bus to the ski school tomorrow. She wants to go by herself.

The hotel is really nice, although I have to admire their photographer. The hotel has everything the web site/brochure promises, but the photos make it all look bigger than it actually is.

I hope to take lots of good pictures. It's quite breathtaking, and I'm not sure photography (at least not my photography) can quite capture the majesty of Alps.

It is hard to imagine here in this snowy paradise the horror of what is happening in Australia. We were fortunate to be sitting behind the television at the airport so that Maddie didn't see it. That is the stuff nightmares are made of--even just seeing it on television. We hope they can get it under control soon.