Spring Break 2016 - Austrian Alps!

Last week (March 7-11) we were able to spend 5 days in the Austrian town of Kaprun, and it was amazing!
For the last year and a half we have done a lot of traveling, but all of it has been to busy cities with lots of tourist attractions, and we are tired! So this spring break we decided we wanted to go somewhere that was not a big city, didn't have many tourist attractions, and was just a beautiful place to relax. Kaprun was perfect.
It's a skiing town surrounded by mountains with lots of hotels, restaurants, and ski lifts in the Salzburg province, and about 70km from the city of Salzburg.

We took 3 trains to get there & 4 trains to get home. About 8-9 hours of travel each way. We watched a lot of movies.

When we first arrived in Kaprun, we explored the hotel and discovered it was one of those fabulous places where if you didn't want to leave, you didn't have to. There was a restaurant, bar, cafe, pool, sauna, masseuse, etc. all without going outside. And so on our first day, we didn't go outside. And it was wonderful.

The view from our favorite cafe spot!

On Tuesday, we decided to explore the town. It was a cloudy day, but not too cold, and we walked around Kaprun, discovering some of it's fun places. There was a castle (though only open on Mondays at 4pm), a church (which you had to pilgrim up at least 100 stairs to get to), and a riverside walk through the heart of the town. For us the highlight was really seeing the different views of the town with the mountains. As flatland Midwesterners, we are excited by hills, so mountains are really amazing!

Beautiful view of Kaprun from the castle.

Wednesday we decided to get really adventurous and try an Alpine Roller Coaster! It was not a 6 Flags type coaster. It was a single seater, and you controlled your speed yourself. Which for some of us (Brittany), made the trip much scarier and much slower than was originally anticipated. The views on the way up were really beautiful, especially since it was a sunny day, and it was definitely a fun bucket list type of experience.

Brittany coming into the end of the coaster.

And, going up!

Thursday was our biggest day. On Thursday we took a bus to the base of the nearby peak: Kitzsteinhorn. This is (obviously) a very popular skiing spot, but there is also a ticket you can buy to get to the top via ski lifts that doesn't involve the actually skiing pass, so that is what we did. We took three different ski lifts, and about 40 minutes later we made it to the top.

The second ski lift & beautiful view!

The views from the top were amazing. There were many moments of just pure awe as we stood there looking down on the town where we were staying, as well as looking out over other mountain peaks. In moments like these, God's majesty, creativity, and just "big"ness are so obvious. It was really fantastic, and pulling ourselves away from the views was probably the most difficult part of the day.

We were blessed with such gorgeous weather - we could see so far! This is the view into Kaprun from way up high.

Aside from these bigger events, most of our week consisted of drinking coffee, eating, doing crosswords, watching movies, sitting in saunas, getting massages, and just finally taking a real, relaxing vacation. It was fantastic.
To see the rest of our pictures, click here!

Prayer Requests:
- English Drama Club! The performance is in less than 4 weeks, so prayers for our students and ourselves as we continue to prepare.
- We will be traveling again next week for our Easter holidays, so prayers for easy & safe travels. 

Praises:
- We are getting glimpses of spring, and are really looking forward to the warmer weather & sunshine heading our way!
- We had such smooth travels to & from Austria that easily could have been much more stressful. And such a relaxing, rejuvenating time. It definitely felt like a blessed week.