8 May 2018
Bugsy was up at 07:30 (do you see how our lives are ruled by her rising and sleeping?!) so we had stories in the tent, before she and I set off in search of Baderwaldlesee, a small lake with warmer water than the large one adjacent to our pitch. We had a fabulous walk up through the forest, telling stories of big bad wolves and fairies, and arrived at the lake ready for a swim. We had to walk around the first part of the lake, as the edges were a metre wide in “pond scum”, presumably because the wind had blown all the tree debris that end! But soon enough, we found a small patch of “beach” and Cornelia (who was already in her swimsuit and sharkfin!) and I were ready to get in. Bugsy tested the water, and was quite sure she didn’t need her wetsuit, but as soon as she was in, she started squawking and demanding that I carry her. Out of the water, wetsuit on, back in the water… I still had to carry her most of the time, but she did finally let go and have a short swim on her own (seconds, rather than minutes, I should be clear), which gave me the opportunity to say that we swam together in the lake, and shared one of those rather special moments together.
She was keen to get out of the water, so I wrapped her up in her towel and headed back in for a brief swim on my own. It was wonderful and peaceful, and everything you might imagine it to be. I always feel most at peace when I’m surrounded by water, and this was no exception.
But that moment was soon over, and when I realised the time, we dashed back to the campsite to shower quickly, and returned to the van when Ian had been packing up everything. We checked out, and were about to leave, when the receptionist came rushing after us… I had, unbelievably, forgotten to pay.
And then, finally, off we went to Liechtenstein! Neither of us has been there before, so we thought “why not?!” We basically had lunch there, in a marvellous little cafe restaurant, enjoying really fresh salads and vegetables at long last. We were due to go on the petit train there, but due to a toddler tantrum at lunchtime, we didn’t. I was particularly gutted, as I do love a good petit train…! To be fair to Cornelia, she has endured hours of driving and toddlers just aren’t that interested in “another mountain”. Which was a shame, as there were plenty of them, as we headed off to Innsbruck for the night!
This journey took longer than planned,as we hadn’t appreciated the need to have a “vignette” (a toll road sticker) in advance of using the Austrian autobahns. Ian tried avoiding them, but it was sending the poor old sat nav doolally, so we stopped off at a service station and in my best bad German, managed to drive away with a ten day pass for the roads and hopefully no fine!
Having navigated to our hotel in Innsbruck, we realised that Bluebell was unlikely to squeeze into their parking lot, so by the time we’d found an alternative (bloody one-way systems!), parked and trekked back to the hotel, it was really rather late. We had a tired and hungry toddler, and were pretty knackered ourselves. The room was lovely, as was our dinner, which we ate in the hotel restaurant. Cornelia’s meal was epic… SIX fish fingers and a plate overflowing with chips. We skinned the fish fingers (she’s scratched the roof of her mouth, so is finding crunchy food a bit of a problem), and she scoffed all of them. I had the local specialty “Tyrolean Schlutzkrapfen” and it was deeeeelicious! (These are pasta filled with potato cheese curd and spinach with nut butter.)
By the time we got Bugsy into bed, it was 22:15 – far too late for a three year old, but amazingly, she was good as gold. As I write this, Ian and I are currently hiding in the vestibule of our hotel room!
Cornelia's adventures around the world 