Visit from the Frazers

Tex, Melissa and Maggie came to visit us at the beginning of February and it was great having them here. Tex was thrilled about going skiing in the Alps, so we all packed up and went to Portes du Soleil. It was really crowded, but we managed to get a good day of skiing in anyway. Melissa was fearless even though it was her 3rd time ever, while I stuck to the bunny slope that wasn't really a bunny slope. The guys were adventurous, though, and tried out a few different slopes. Tex even got Tom on a short black slope and into some powder!

We walked downtown one day and had lunch at a delicious cafe where Maggie enchanted one of the workers. The most unusual story of the trip was their last night here. We were trying to find a good German restaurant (I wanted rosti) so we went to a place about 20 minutes away on the recommendation of a friend. It was closed, so we headed back towards Fribourg. We'd seen Hotel Edelweiss on the way and thought that would be a good place to stop - it just sounded so German and regional. However, when we sat down we started to have our doubts since the decor looked Chinese. And sure enough, when the menu came, it was a Chinese restaurant in Hotel Edelweiss. Oh well. The food was very good even though it wasn't even remotely German!

On top of one of the Portes du Soleil slopes.

Maggie got to hang out with Kacey and Cambelle while we all went skiing. Kacey loved having someone she could "teach." She showed Maggie how to go potty, how to eat and how to dress up like a princess. She then pretended she was a little girl named Maggie for about the next week.

Maggie won my heart while she was here - isn't she a cutie! We walked up to a nearby cafe one day and she enjoyed sitting on the table and playing with the spoon (after eating most of her mom and dad's piece of cake!)

Austria

We decided to take a 3-day weekend and go somewhere just because. We chose Austria because we though it would be pretty in the winter and we could take a day to ski. We drove about 5 hours and got to our hotel just a little outside of Innsbruck. It served a wonderful breakfast each morning (I could live off of the fresh bread in Europe!!) and was very quaint looking - I loved it! The next day we went to Innsbruck where we just wandered around town and admired the architecture. A big sight to see there is the Golden Roof (Goldenes Dachl - see picture above), an addition to a normal house on the main square commissioned by Maximilian I in the 15th century. We also took a funicular up a couple hundred feet and got a bird's-eye-view of the city where I indulged in a coffee and a traditional Austrian cake - chocolate, of course! The next day we drove to Salzburg - famous for Mozart and the home of the Von Trapp family. Again there was magnificent architecture as well as street musicians. We toured the Hohensalzburg fortress, had coffee at Cafe Tomaselli, saw Mozart's childhood home and spotted some of the filming locations from The Sound of Music. Our last day there, we went skiing at a place called Axamer Lizum - where Olympic skiing was help twice. This meant that the "easy slopes" weren't on the same level of easy as I've seen in the Appalachian Mountains ; I stuck to the bunny slope :) It was a good trip - though quick! I feel like we could have a full-time job exploring all the neat places that surround us and still not see all there is to see. But I'll take what I can get!

Hotel Tyrolis in Zirl, Austria

A view of Salzburg from Hohensalzburg

This quaint cafe is located right around the corner from Mozart's home and was oft visited by his wife - Constanze. The coffee and the cakes were delicious!