Hi Friends! This is one of the 3 posts that is submitted for the nomination of Best Photo Blog category by OMY Singapore Blog Awards. I must hereby THANK the panel of judges from OMY’s editorial team for selecting TravelerFolio.com as one of the top ten finalists in the Photo Blog category.

Please leave your comment in this post if you like it.

Rest and Relax day for us. We set out for our hiking at Untertal, a beautiful alpine path behind our resort that leads to the highest waterfall in the region. Read the full story

Early in the morning, we left for Innsbruck, a capital city of Tyrol in Western Austria, and an internationally renowned winter sports centre that hosted the Winter Olympic twice.

This is one of my favourite photos with Alps in the background.

Risking our lives while standing on the tram track just to take a nice picture.

The famous Golden Roof is an attraction in Innsbruck. When we spotted the Golden Roof, there were musicians playing under it.

Walking through the old streets, we saw many souvenir shops selling cuckoo clocks and cow bells too, and they were cheaper than those in Switzerland. Too bad, I had already bought those stuff as I thought the conversion rate was better in Swiss Franc than Euro, as SF1 = S$1.35 and €1 = S$1.98 and I was wrong! Still, Switzerland stuffs were more expensive.

Having meals in MacDonald’s were not any cheaper. They cost double of what we paid in Singapore after currency conversion, though sometimes hamburgers were having offer at €0.98 only (we grabbed such offer back in Versailles, Paris).

We had our lunch at a restaurant where the customer service was so bad that we were being ignored numerous times by the waiters and waitresses. The food was not nice too - very saltish chicken meat. This was the worst unwelcoming experience that I ever had in a restaurant.

The pretty alpine resort in Schladming!

A rest and relax day for us, after days of rushing for trains and tight schedules. We rented bicycles and bought groceries at the town which is about 1.5km away from the resort located on the mountain. Getting to the town was further than it seemed to be as we had to walk along a few bends on the road while descending from the mountain. We rented mountain bikes for half a day at €11 for each bike. We also bought some food to cook in our resort and the food was quite cheap. We thought we could put the bags of food on our bicycles and rode back to the resort, but it proved to be a stupid idea, when we had forgotten that our resort was high up on the mountain! We ended up exhausted ourselves and instead, apart from carrying the heavy bags of food, we had to push our bicycles up the slopes! Dog-tired!

After putting down the food in the resort, we rode around the alpine region, relaxing and getting rejuvenated in the alpine breeze.

Came across a stream. It was nature untouched! Read the full story

We woke up early in the morning freezing due the cold mountain air that had crept in through the windows that we had left ajar for ventilation, we thought. Shut the windows tightly and went back to sleep. The next morning, I found yellowish powder scattered all over our clothes that we hung out to dry in the open air at the balcony. We were puzzled and later we found out that the it was spring-summer pollen season. The yellowish powder was pollen.

To get to the nearest train station from our resort, we had to walk all the way down the mountain slope to the town at the valley, and by the time we reached the train station, we almost burnt out. We met a friendly English couple at the train station and had a small chat with them. They had been to Singapore before and found it interesting to see hawker centres selling many kind of food. They even asked what is our staple food which we said is rice. We asked them back this question and they replied, “We eat potatoes…”

Salzburg is famous for its baroque architecture. It is also the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and the famous landmarks for The Sound of Music. We bought ourselves a Salzburg card each and it was worth the price we paid for, since we got free admission to all city’s attractions and free use of public transport throughout the city too. I would say it’s a must-to-have card to explore Salzburg. To pay an extra more, one can buy a Swatch “Access” wristwatch to keep and enjoy the same privileges too.

Here, we ate a very, very saltish pretzel, with big rough salt sprinkled on it. From the Hohensalzburg Fortress museum, you can see the great view of the well-preserved baroque city - a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Read the full story

We embarked on an exciting journey to the world largest limestone ice caves located in Werfen - The Eisriesenwelt (German: “World of the Ice Giants”).

We met two friendly English old couple from Yorkshire. They were leaving the resort and they offered us to get into their cab to the train station. It was snowing in Schladming.

But during our way to Werfen, we missed our friend as he hopped onto a train first and before we could board the train, a train officer shouted at us and warned us that the train was leaving. Then we also realised our friend was in the wrong train. A kind man told us that the train would terminate at the next station and we could meet our friend by taking the another train too.

When the next train came, Jacky asked another train officer if it was the right train , but the officer simply ignored us when his colleague went up and talked to him! They completely ignored us! Feeling helpless, we boarded the train and we thought it was the right train until Jacky asked a conductor and was told that the next train was the right one instead. Immediately, we got out of the train, so scared that the train would just go before we could get down, just like our friend who failed to do that!

So, the train to Werfen was late. We went to the ice caves without our friend as we had too many doubts about the train timing, plus unhelpful train officers.

Finally, we reached Werfen. To get up to the ice caves, we took the shuttle bus to the next bus-stop. From there, we had to walk for another 20mins upslope in the cold to the cable car station. The cable car took us to somewhere near the ice caves entrance, and we had to walk for at least another 20mins upslope in the cold again, while gasping for breathe in the thin mountain air. However, it was a lovely walk in the snow. In fact, it was snowing.

Despite the problems that we encountered on our way to the giant ice caves, it was a well worth visit. We had a German-speaking guided tour in the ice caves; we were given an English description of the ice caves instead.

At the giant ice caves entrance. Read the full story

GOSH! We missed the train to Hallstatt and wasted almost half day! The trains changed their arrival platform but the train schedule on the notice board was not updated! We blindly waited from 12plus to 2plus for two hours. Then we realised something was wrong when no one was left waiting at the station.

In the end, we waited for another hour for the next train ride to Hallstatt. Our friend didn’t want to wait anymore and hopped on to the next arriving train to Graz. We didn’t follow him as we thought by the time we reached Graz on a 2-hour ride, it should be almost the same timing as we reached Hallstatt. We thought that was nothing much to see in Graz too.

We didn’t take the direct train to Hallstatt. We went to Bad Aussee first to enjoy the beautiful scenic ride.

To get the Hallstatt, we took a ferry ride from Hallstatt train station. It was a short ride across the opposite side of the lake to the “Cuckoo Clocks” town. It is called that way as the houses at the bank are pretty and look like cuckoo clocks. There are many salt mines and ice caves in Hallstatt. In fact, it has the oldest salt mine in the world and a UNESCO World Heritage Site for Cultural Heritage.

We were late when we reached Hallstatt, thus, didn’t join the salt mine tour. The bone house next to the Catholic Church was closed for the day too. In fact, many sites had closed for the day by the time we reached there. It took us half a day to arrive at Hallstatt, but the small town can be easily toured on foot in less than thirty minutes. Read the full story

We took a direct train to Vienna, the capital of Austria and reached Vienna after a few hours of train ride from Prague. We checked in to Hotel Praterstern - the BEST hotel that we had stayed throughout the trip in Europe!! Anyway, it had to be the best, as it is literally the only HOTEL we had stayed; we stayed in youth hostels previously.

The historic centre of Vienna is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. St Stephen’s Cathedral is just a walking distance away from our hotel. It is a Romanesque and Gothic styles cathedral and is the most important religious building in Vienna.

The other side of St Stephen’s Cathedral.

Vienna is so different from the other states that we had visited in Austria earlier on. It is like Paris; it has plenty of boutiques and shoppers. There are also more Asians. Many buskers could sing classical soprano very well too! The people could speak good English and more helpful and friendlier too.

The shopping lane in the city centre seemed to me like the one in Nanjing Street, Shanghai. And the city centre was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We had an enjoyable time savouring delicious Austrian pastries, ice-creams and sausages. Of course, they were no longer as cheap as those in Prague. Everything was back to double. Ouch! :(

And plenty of Mozart Chocolate Balls…

Exploring the city by foot… Read the full story