Day 6 - Padova to Austria

Wednesday 10 September 2008

We set of from Padova with the old girl having developed an increased thirst for oil as well as a worrying groaning noise from the steering when cornering - not too concerning on the auto strada but more pronounced once off it. We managed to get going around 9am but already it was becoming hot. We took the route along Italy's flat and boring north coast past Venice.

Because of the Beast's various ailments we changed our plans and shortened our original route, which was to have involved a meander through Slovenia via the beautiful Lake Bled and on to Bratislava. Instead we turned directly North after Udine towards Salzburg via the Eastern edge of the Alps.

On reaching the border with Austria we stopped for a brew up and the purchase of the obligatory vingnette allowing us to drive on the Austrian motorway.

Shortly afterwards at Gmund we spotted a sign reading 'Porsche Automuseum' and made an unscheduled detour to a little gem of a museum on the site of Porsche's first factory during World War 2. It is now the only privately owned Porsche museum in the world and contains around 30 Porsches of all descriptions including Mario Andretti's formula one car from the 1970's seen here:

Afterwards we enjoyed a light lunch and beer at the pleasant garden cafe, before continuing on to Salzburg and then eastwards for an hour or so to the town of Altmunster. This town we picked at random from the map for the sole reason it was by a large lake the Traunsee. The lake is beautiful and the choice was for once good.

We found a typical Pension in which to stay at a reasonable rate of 40 Euros. I went out for an early evening run to explore whilst Fatrat checked the Beast yet again for signs of further distress.

We went out to eat at 8, stopping for a fine large beer or two on the way on a roof top terrace overlooking the lake.

The consequence of this was that we had real difficulty in finding somewhere still open to eat. Eventually we descended on the cheap but excellent 'Pizzeria Toscana' curiously owned by a fat Turk!.

Total distance covered in the day was 336 miles, with 1,897 miles managed all together.