mayrhofen I: welcome to winter

  
[full set here]
About a hot minute after getting back from spending Christmas in Virginia, I hopped in the car and drove south to spend New Year's in Mayrhofen, Austria with four of my best friends. I have basically no grounds for complaining in my life. Where did you spend New Year's, Kelly? Oh, you know. Tirol.

Mayrhofen was really lovely, and I say that as a non-skier (I've given skiing and snowboarding a couple of halfhearted tries in the past and am not terribly committed to trying again). We watched plenty of movies and TV (<3 you, Alias), acquired and shot off fireworks (okay, Felix shot them off; the rest of us watched from a safe distance), went to an Erlebnisbad, watched a New Year's Day horse race in the snow, went snowshoeing, and ate all the Käsespätzle, Schnitzel, and fondue we could handle. Tip: go to Wirtshaus zum Griena. It's down a narrow street that is probably perfectly innocuous-looking in daylight and was fairly creepy at night, but inside it's rustic and wonderful. The Schnitzel was great, the spinach ravioli with Alpine cheese was marvelous, and the cheesy-potato-bacon masterpiece I ordered was a heart attack in a skillet, and so worth it. Be sure to reserve in advance! They nearly didn't have a table for us, and that would have been a sadness. I mean, to the extent that being forced to eat something else delicious at one of the other lovely establishments in Mayrhofen really counts as sad.