Occasionally, Paul doesn't always think things through. But then we just make the best of the 'opportunities' that arise from this. After all we set off for Sainsbury's last year and because of him struggling with his right hand turns we ended up going most of the way round the world before getting home.
First thing that hit us in Liechtenstein was a nice little castle perched up on a rock just above the road. Liechtenstein isn't very big so the second thing was upon us very quickly. And that was the road to our resting, sorry, sleeping place for the night.
So when you reserve a place to sleep and it says in the small print that it is not accessible by car in the winter months you could imagine certain things. When it is called a Berggasthaus you can also work out it is on a mountain. So we climbed about a kilometre in a very short distance with a series of very sharp hairpins - which always come in pairs, left and right handed, and it was stressful.
But when we got there we felt on top of the world in more ways than one. Having got there, there was no discussion whatsoever about going out elsewhere for the evening.
And what goes up; comes down. And we came down from the mountain.
In fact the above was written before we came back down again. The word 'safely' can now be added. Note that the average gradient up the one kilometre was not far off 1:10.
There was no way after having made it all the way up there that we were going to come back down for dinner so we ate there too. Local, very local, chicken, eggs, pork and dairy products were on the menu.
We had arrived mid - afternoon and the cattle were down in the valley and we saw them coming in for milking from afar. Saw and heard. Are the bells needed to avoid them getting lost or just to weight their necks down to get more grass in?
The very quaint sound of bells was not quite so quaint during the night and one wondered whether fitting music to the bells as the cows were ringing them would not be the ultimate mathematical equation?
Morning broke, we came down from the mountain and visited Europe's smallest capital city, Vaduz. There are only 37,000 inhabitants in Liechtenstein and about 5,000 of those are in Vaduz. Just about as many contemporary art sculptures down the hight street too. August 15th, the morning we were there, was National Day and we climbed up the escarpment to see the Crown Prince's residence and were given flags and song sheets for the National Anthem. The Crown Prince's son runs the country and is married to Princess Sophia of Bavaria - we thought that this only existed in Disneyland?
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