This is one of the first attractions Vincent suggested when we were planning for the road trip. Usually for road trips, I think i usually look for attractions that take just a little bit of time, especially when we have all our luggages in the car. It turned out, for this trip, all our stops were quite lengthy. In fact, this attraction, the Grossglockner High Alpine Road, was a 4 hours driving detour. I actually have friends who had been there, but it was a disappointment for them because it was foggy the whole time, so my expectation was not high. Also, I had some unpleasant experiences before getting on the road; twice I was shortchanged, once at the gas station, and another at the entrance of the road. I got the gas station person to correct it, but not the one at road entrance (because we were in a rush as it was getting late, and we only realized after we drove a little bit.) Not a good impression of Austrian people (or were they East European immigrants?) I want to think it is their math skills…
As I was saying, it was getting late, but weather was great, and I wanted to drive as fast as possible, without skipping good view points. There were numerous checkpoints, and we stopped for a few of them. It was all very nice, and surprisingly, it reminded me of driving south shore of Maui, but instead of water ocean on the other side of the road, it was the big mountain range. If there is a destination of this drive, it would be the visitor center located close to Grossglockner, the highest mountain in Austria. But by the time we got there, it was pretty dark. It wasn’t that late, but the visitor center is surrounded by mountains, so there would be sunlight only when it’s earlier in the day.
Our hotel for that night is in Zell am See, not far from the entrance of this alpine road. But it would be a harder drive, going back the same way, in the dark. So we chose to finish the drive, and got out at the other end of the road. Then we speeded through the highway around the mountains. By the time we reached our hotel, it was well past 8pm.
