The night before leaving Vienna, Lothar went out with Chri and rented a car from Eloop. This is a great service! They have a fleet of Teslas, and you use an app to easily check out a car that’s parked near your location. It’s meant for people to use around the city so they don’t need to own their own car. You can rent for minutes hours, and even days, which is what we did. Charging and parking around Vienna are included, as is all charging at Tesla chargers! Imagine renting a car without the long line-ups and rental agreement forms, and the lengthy check-in process that costs less than any other rental car, and you don’t pay for gas on top of that!
So on the 26th, we headed out of Vienna and down towards Leibniz. On the way, we stopped by Lothar’s brother Wolfie’s place! We spent some time with Wolfie and Suzie, and their son Logan. They had just experienced a lot of flooding in the basement, which turned into a huge project to fix. However, it also provided the opportunity for him to upgrade his ‘man cave.’ He now has a really nice setup for gaming and streaming, including a pull-down green screen!
We then drove on to Gunther’s place for the night. We exchanged a few little gifts, but I also received my prize for winning the family Guess F1 game this season!
In the morning (Dec 27th), Wolfie and Suzie dropped off Logan, and everyone started their day.
We headed out into town on our own and had a really nice lunch at a fancy hotel restaurant – Alte Post. The duck liver two ways was out of this world!
Then we checked into our spa hotel, ‘Staribacher,’ where we had several nights booked. It’s a place Gunther’s family loves to visit, and they reserved a room for us.
Later in the day, we went for a nice drive around the countryside and ended up back in Leibniz in the evening.
Before returning to our room, we explored the area around the hotel and spa, then returned to our room to enjoy the champagne we received. 🙂 Actually, we only took pictures of it. LOL. We drank it another time. We also had a lovely dinner at the hotel restaurant – truly fine dining! And we were joined by Lothar’s friend Archie and his wife Viktoria (Vika).
In the morning (Dec 28th), our garden view was all frosty and foggy. Neat!
We spent a whole day in Graz with Hardy and Helga. We had to take it easy because we caught a cold from Gunther, so we walked very slowly. We had lunch at a great open sandwich deli and walked up to Schlossberg – the castle on the hill. The weather was really lovely for all of it!
For dinner, we all went back to our hotel restaurant – Staribacher. And as a surprise, Hardy invited 2 more of Lothar’s friends!! So we had a full house – us, Hardy and Helga, Andreas and Marlene, and Igor. The conversation was great – everyone made an effort to use English a lot of the time, and the rest of the time, I was able to follow a little bit with the words I recognized. Of course, dinner was amazing again.
The next morning (Dec 29th), we got a massage and enjoyed the spa. The massage was with hot stones – it was really gentle, but it actually helped my shoulder a lot! The spa time wasn’t so great because there was a film crew filming something, and they kept singing ‘Happy Birthday’ very loudly over and over again. There were also several children running all around the various waterfall features, letting out shrill screams. LOL. We planned to come back another time.
Lunch was out in the country at a place that came highly recommended. And it sure was nice! Wow, we’ve had several days of very high-end gourmet food now! Then we had a wonderful drive around the countryside, and of course, ended up back at our hotel.
The next day, we headed out to visit Lothar’s step-mom, Anne-Marie, and Ian. We stopped to visit his sister, Moira, on the way, and she came with us. We all chatted for a while over tea, then walked over to Slovenia to have lunch. I had a lovely deli board appetizer with various dried meats and cheeses that were much like those in Serbia. Yum! Later, Moira picked up her boys, William and James, from the train, and we had a great visit all together.
Then on the last day of the year (Dec 31st), we met up with Lothar’s friend Eva for a very pleasant lunch. The restaurant was large and decorated splendidly. It sits right on a reservoir lake, so the view was nice too!
