Yodel-ay-he-hoo

Well, it's been a few days since we spoke last, let me keep you updated.

After Slovenia, we drove through Italy to Innsbruck in Austria. I'd calculated that it would be a 4 hour drive, but it ended up being 8 hours. And it was HOT. Bloody hot, again. We spent two hours in a traffic jam in Italy, that we thought must have been a really serious accident or something. Turns out it was a queue to get to the toll booth! We also discovered that of all the countries that we'd been in, the Italians knew how to drive the least. They really didn't seem to understand the concept of 'lanes' or pulling over to overtake someone. Added to the top of that, they have toll motorways in Italy. It was our first proper experience of them, and they are bloody expensive. I reckon I've spent at least £150 squids on motorway tolls and vignettes (like motorway taxes in some countries). Anyways, I went on an overzealous tidying spree in the car at one of the Italian service stations and lost the ticket that they give you to tell you where you get on. So we got to the Italian border, and they were going to charge us a 60 Euro fine for losing our ticket, but we sweet talked the lady at the booth (who was very impressed that I was called Tony ;-) and they just charged us the amount that was owed, but gave us some forms that they said we had to fill in 'if someone writes us from Italy' and we also created a massive queue of angry italians behind us ;-) Serves them right for being shit drivers!!!

So, we finally reach Innsbruck, all sweated up, and nowhere near the town centre (my mum had recommended we go see the house with the golden roof!), but had no time to do anything so just went down to the hotel down the road which had a restaurant attatched to it. We weren't expecting much from it, but we did get served by the tallest woman on the planet! After we had ordered our food, in the auditorium next to us (which was part of the hotel) a proper genuine Alpine shindig got together. No seriously. There was yodeling aplenty (hence the title of the blog post), some alpen hof, wood chopping, a bit of opera, pig tails and the piece de resistance, genuine men in leather pants slapping their thighs. It was the most cliched thing we have ever seen, which made it all the more amazing. However, i suspect the incredibly tall waitress had heard it once or twice before, as she looked like she was going to kill us.

Today was the really long drive again, from Innsbruck, Austria, through Switzerland and then into France. However, the weather has been nice and cool and overcast, and we have been thankful for it. We didn't encounter any traffic jams and it only took us 12 hours, which was slightly less than I was expecting it too. Once again, France has annoying toll roads and we got well stung for them, but i suppose the alternative was taking the car to a post office and posting it.

So we got back to original hostel that we stayed at our first night in France. We wandered off into town for a meal and chose 'Restaurant Le Welsh Pub'. Which we were telling Mum about on the phone with amusement, when this couple sat near us started pissing themselves. Only turns out that they were actually Welsh. They must have been employed to sit there to make the pub genuine under EU rules or something. We had a really nice meal, well mostly nice. Chris tried L'Escargot for the first time, which he really enjoyed, and I opted for the Flemish Meat Stew. I think it may have lost a little in the translation - it was a load of off cuts of cold ham and turkey in a big solid block of jelly like you get in pork pies. Slightly dissapointing (Craig will testify that I always choose the best things in restaurants). All in all it was a very nice meal and we got to try out some of our French (of which there wasn't much between us!) - but the meal cost 40 quid each - it was 7 Euros for a pint - and a European 500ml pint, not a proper English one! Theiving French bastards!!!

Anyways, we're just about to go to bed here now to get the Ferry back tomorrow morning. We should be back in Blackpool for 3 or 4 ish if there isn't any traffic and I'm sooooo loooking forward to coming into work on Wednesday and seeing what a mess they've made of everything without me there :-) Mum is getting Bacon and Egg butties ready for us for the grand homecoming.

Au Revoir, Auf Weidersehn, Ciao and Goodbye for now!

Ant