Below is a panoramic view from my balcony:

Austria is a very beautiful country.  It is just as beautiful as I thought it would be and as pretty as the pictures/postcards I had always seen.   It is a great place for nature lovers as well as sports enthusiasts to visit.  There are many very nice and well maintained biking and hiking trails especially in the small town I stayed in called St. Johann.

 I love seeing the mountains also known as the Alps because I live in Florida where it is very flat.  The only bad thing about the hills in the mountains is walking anywhere.  It gets a lot more tiring especially in the summer as Austria does get very warm.  It does cool off a little bit at night unlike Florida which stays very warm at night most of the year.  

I would like to return the Austria someday and stay in the cities of either Vienna or Salzburg as there are a lot to see and do there. Here are a few of my photos.  Pretty much everywhere I look I wanted to take a picture as everything was so pretty!  This is just a handful of the photos I took while I was there for a week.  I loved visiting the gorge I wrote a post about it here is the link:   

Visiting the Beautiful Liechtensteinklamm Gorge in St Johann, Austria  

I really did like Austria, but began to feel a little landlocked being an "island girl".  I was really looking forward to visiting Santorini toward the end of my stay.  St Johann is a great place to spend a few days to relax, view and or photo the gorgeous landscapes and of course visit the gorge mentioned above.

Here is a lovely church I visited:

There are flowers everywhere in the summer and on many window boxes.  The houses reminded me of the pretty swiss chalets I'd always seen in photos.

There is a river in town that is very scenic:

I loved the architecture and especially this pink house!
The following two photos were seen on my LONG walk to the gorge.  I loved the lush green landscape and mountains.  I think it reminded me of where I grew up in Vermont:

Many people at my hotel were simply lounging on the beautiful grounds relaxing.  I'm more of a "type B" traveler, but I decided to join them one day having severe jet lag.

It was a little boring to me so I took the above "selfie" and "toes in the sun" photo":

Here is an aerial view of Vienna taken from the plan en route to Santorini:

Miscellaneous photos taken around town:





Here are some photos of the gorge I mentioned above:

An outdoor market I found leaving the gorge:

I will leave you with a couple of panorama shots that I enjoy taking as well as one of me on my balcony.  These are of the grounds of the hotel I stayed at called the Alpenland Sporthotel. Thank you so much for stopping by as always I love to hear your comments and questions have a wonderful week my friends!

~Michelle