First day back in the office and I'm reminiscing...

...Or as Morpheus said to Neo in the first Matrix film... "Welcome to the real world".

Stepped on the scales this morning, yes it was a gain, would have been miraculous if it hadn't have been given the week of holiday eating I'd just done.  Still, a 7.8lb gain isn't bad at all given all the non-Slimming world food I'd been shoveling down my mouth.  I do wonder what it would have been if I'd not been snowboarding also.

I left a review for the hotel on TripAdvisor at lunchtime.  I'm one of those sorts of people that doesn't normally leave reviews on anything but they definitely deserved it.  I could actually only find one niggly thing with the hotel and that was that the beds only had one large pillow each.  Much bigger than what we have in the UK, but much flatter.  So I ended up placing a towel under the pillow and then also folding the pillow in half.  Not the biggest issue in the world, I know.  But not wanting to leave my Hotel Tauernhof comment on a negative there is a guy there, a bartender called Patrick and he is absolutely brilliant.  Engaging with everyone and even remembering everyone's drinks.  Keegan even "promoted" him to having his own name in one evening which is testament to how much Keegan liked him too.  What I mean by that last comment is, with Keegan, the more you interact with him, and the more he likes you, puts you closer to having your name back.  Take for example my friend Claire.  Now she used to get those Lego cards from the supermarket, she'd give me some for Keegan and some to other parents.  So, naturally, Claire was "Lego card lady" but after a while, she got promoted to being "Claire".  Admittedly nowhere near as quickly as Patrick, but he definitely was the exception.

Is it a bad thing that I went to the crystal ski website this morning to have a look at going back to Kaprun in February 2019?  1 year to get all the monies together plus Crystal Ski does let you pay for it in installments.  There isn't much that we would change about our break out there.  We'd definitely keep the hotel the same, it wasn't the cheapest but it definitely also wasn't the most expensive one.

No, what we would change though is our constant heading to the glacier.  Yes it was familiar and we had our favourite runs, so familiarity breeds comfort (except when going down the black mamba in atrocious visibility conditions - not something I would want to become familiar with).  The trip to Saalbach was the proverbial cracking of the seal, we found another place where yes OK we hit the same run over and over again all day (blue 46), but there were two restaurants at the top which were perfect for lunch...

Definitely couldn't go to Austria and not have a curry-wurst

Keegan's Saalbach salad (turkey salad)

But what I'm saying is that next time there are two more places we'd definitely go to visit.  There were village lifts in walking distance from Hotel Tauernhof but we didn't try out those slopes.  Thinking about it now you could easily start off there in the morning to "warm up" as it has a blue, red and black runs on it, then either head to the glacier or to Zell am See.  The ski buses run very frequently (every 15mins) in the morning and late afternoon and they're free which is always a huge plus unless you're made of money...


Onto the really sad part of this post, our final day in Kaprun...

We woke up, had breakfast and went to the Kitzsteinhorn ticket office in town to get our Black Mamba t-shirts.  Keegan also bought a couple of polar bears (one for him and one for a girl he likes at school - awwwww)

Always a plus as that was less stuff to put into my rucksack on the mountain itself from the shop up there.  Packed that all up and then off we were to the glacier.  The weather had started to draw in and was turning a bit grim, but nowhere near as bad as it was on the second day when I went down the Black mamba.  Anyway, a few runs and then into the souvenir shop to buy a few more trinkets from the mountain (fridge magnets).  Then in for lunch, being the last day I thought a proper lunch (i.e. not just a big bowl of fries).  Keegan opted for a chicken burger of which he gave me all of the salad out of it.  not sure why he always does that, maybe he thinks I just need to eat more salad...

I on the other hand fancied something different, so I went to the pizza counter and ordered a slice of pepperoni.  Now, given the price of the pizza was the same as the burger, I definitely wasn't expecting the below...  yes, that's a dinner plate it is on.

The weather had then started to really draw in so we managed another couple of runs (a mixture of blues and reds) before I really had to call it a day as it was starting to turn foggy

Our final descent....

Descending the mountain for the last time seemed very surreal as it was like "well, that's it for Kaprun".  I'd have absolutely loved it to be a bluebird day so we could have spent all day up there bombing about.  But when you're having to slow it right down in comparison to the rest of the week, it wasn't a risk I was prepared to take on the final day for an extra hour and a half on the glacier.

Once back at the hotel there was the monotony of packing the bags.  Which I wont bore you (possibly even further with)

Nearly forgot to mention our last nights dinner at the Tauernhof!  So poor of me for that to slip my mind.  Anyway, I chose a braised leg of venison with a juniper sauce and red cabbage.  Once again, it was absolutely lovely

Keegan on the other hand didn't fancy eating Bambi (oooh I'm so mean) so he opted for the VEGETARIAN dish...  I'm not kidding, he did and that was Cauliflower in beer dough with tartare sauce (I only ever thought that was served with fish).  

For dessert and I cannot believe Keegan was too stuffed to enjoy any of it and so didn't go up and get any we had pancakes! As we had missed pancake day we were feeling a bit left out, but the dessert buffet had them in a metal container type thing, you could spot the Brits as we had formed an orderly queue to it. None of this pushing and shoving to get there first like we were finally used to on the slopes in the queues for chairlifts and gondolas. The only "downside" is that the tongs we had to use to get the pancakes were not that effective at separating them so unfortunately I might have ended up with about 8 pancakes (oh dear). From the picture below I think I managed to make it all look rather presentable don't you think?