Back to Austria

At breakfast at our Cortina hotel we recognized a young guy from Drei Zinnen. After 3 weeks of hutting it (with hotels every 3 days or so like us), he suggested a hut we'd like in the Kitzbuheler Alps. Well, that was all it took for us to take to the road and head back to Austria. Hut hiking is a lot less stressful than driving in busy towns. On a hut hike you follow the trail and your only decision is whether to have Kaiserschmarrn for lunch or for dinner. As soon as we left Italy we felt more relaxed in the open Austrian mountain valleys. The Italian roads are crowded with vacationers and drivers are aggressive. 

We parked at a trailhead near Kitzbuhel and headed up to a hut. The rain started so we rigged our umbrellas onto our packs. The Bochumer hut was built in 1842 as part of a copper mining operation. It is run by a family and they had a cozy fire in the dining room to warm us up. There were only two other hikers and it felt nice and homey to have dinner there while the thunder, lightning and rain stayed on the other side of the windows. Speaking of dinner, we ordered spätzle (think shaved pasta/gnocchi smothered with Gouda then baked in an iron skillet and topped with fried onion skins) followed by, you guessed it, Kaiserschmarrn this time in an iron skillet served with homemade apricot jam (the best yet as you can see by Arlo's expression when the skillet was licked clean).

Sent from Ann's iPhone