Right, backtracking a bit now, to the other week when we took Jess on her first proper holiday, to Austria. It's taken us a while to do the photos, which is our excuse for not posting till now. Hopefully though, the photographic Jess-fest on the following pages will be worth it. We went to stay at the Hotel Esterhammer in the Tirol near Innsbruck, and Jessica's arrival marked the fourth generation of our family to stay there...

...

On Wednesday 6 September, we flew from Coventry to Salzburg, with Thomsonfly, which was very straightforward. Jess behaved pretty well, and all went well until we got to the car hire desk to collect a car seat. They did have one, but it wasn't quite what we expected from a safe, Germanic, efficient nation.

It was too big for her, torn, smelled of stale smoke, and had no head restraint.

Once we'd worked out how to fit it in the car (without instructions) we managed to strap her in, load the cases in the boot, and depart for the Hotel, about 90 minutes drive away.

It was a hot day (over 30°C), and Jess was already quite travel-weary, and pretty much as soon as we left the airport car park, she started crying. The cries grew more earnest as we got on the autobahn, and we wondered if we should pull over and check her, but after about 10 minutes she quietened down. The journey didn't get any cooler, which was odd as the car air-con was on... Or so we thought. We tried turning it on and off to see if it made any difference, but we couldn't really tell. It was only really when we arrived at Jenbach and opened the car door to find it marginally cooler outside that we were certain that it was kaput.

Worse, we discovered why Jess was wailing at the outset. The lack of head restraint in the car seat meant she was flopped over. The next photo shows the best we could do by tacking a towel into the seat lining to stop her keeling over completely. She was hot, wonky and tired, and we felt like bad parents. Bah!

Fortunately, no lasting harm was done, and we did manage to get a replacement car with working air-con the next day by going down to the Innsbruck branch. Sadly, no other car seats were available. We're not impressed, given they don't cost much. It's a shame because last year we actually wrote to the same car hire company to thank them for the good service they gave us. Not quite the same letter will be sent this time. Moving on...

On the way back from Innsbruck, we stopped at the town of Schwaz (twinned with East Grinstead), where they've opened a big new Spar. In Austria, Spar is actually not a crappy little corner shop, but a major multiple like Tesco. This one was pretty huge, and replete with a 400 space underground car park with a pair of travelators to and from the shop. Herein lay the foundations of The travelator incident at Interspar Schwaz.

We did a bit of shopping (nappies, water, emergency beer) and had quite a full trolley as well as Jess following behind in her buggy. As we progressed down the travelator, we saw a late-middle-aged woman coming up the travelator towards us. We were bemused. This travelator was going down. She was coming up. But not on the 'up' travelator. No, she was striving up the 'down' travelator. She'd already got past one puzzled couple with their trolley. We were next. She asked if we could move our trolley across to give her room to pass, but it was too heavy, and we said it was impossible. She shrugged, and waited, smiling. Ros and I looked at one another, not smiling. This was not good. The end of the travelator was approaching, and she seemed oblivious, facing optimistically upwards (perhaps heavenwards). It seemed that the inexorable downwards motion of the travelator was escaping her notice, despite the clear visual cues. We tried to warn her, but sadly, the inevitable happened. We reached the bottom. Her clogs hit the end of the travelator, and momentum did its thing. She fell on her arse, and (as if in slow motion) thumped her head on the marble floor below with a resounding echo. Now, we had an interesting problem. I still had a heavy trolley heading south, and Ros was trying to backpedal a buggy. Oddly, despite the clarity of the moment, I don't recall the expressions of the people further up the travelator behind Ros. Somehow I managed to disengage the trolley wheels from the grooves of the travelator without marmalising the mad woman's ankles, and pushed it to one side to give Ros a chance to reach solid ground. I helped her to her feet, and she apologised for her silly mistake. Then, she started back up the 'down' travelator again. I had to drag her back and point her to the 'up' travelator 3 feet away. I knew that those German lessons I'd taken this year would come in handy...

After a night of electric storms, Friday opened a bit dully, so we decided to head for Swarovski Crystal World which, slightly scarily, is Austria's most popular tourist attraction. It's an audio-visual art installation extravaganza, with Swarovski crystal naturally at its heart. We figured it'd be a good thing to take Jess to, as there's lots of colour, light, shade, ambient sound and a lot of bling to look at. It worked. Jess was fascinated by it all; with hindsight, we think it must be a bit womb-like. Here are some pictures.

The same day, we also bought a candle from the Wax-art Candle World in nearby Brixlegg. This was an odd mixture of tourist-trap-coach-party-gift-opportunity-hell and a rustic version of Madam Tussauds. On the plus side, it did have a very fine life-size rendition of Leonardo's Last Supper (in wax). Oh, and this. Ros is the one in the green trousers.

Saturday was sunny again, and we went to Mittenwald, across the German border in the Bavarian Black Forest. For cake devotees, this is a pilgrimage site for traditional Schwarzwalder kirschetorte. Naturally, we partook. It's also a pretty little town, renowned for its centuries-old violin-making. Here's a quick piccy.

We went on to Seefeld, a resort popular with Brits, where it turned out they were holding a traditional handicraft festival. Amid the woodturning, porcelain and sausages, we found a spot to rest, and Jess inadvertently became an exhibit for numerous passing German tourists to coo at (Ah, Sie ist so süss, wie eine Puppe!). Damn, we should have charged a couple of Euros, and we'd have covered our sausage costs.

Sunday was a quiet day. Jess was looking particularly cute, so we took lots of photos of her.

Which will bring us back to Do. (You do look at the picture captions/filenames, don't you?)

On Monday, we drove the few miles to Rattenberg, which is a gorgeous little town famed for its glass-blowing and decoration. We went to a pharmacist there as well, as Ros had been badly bitten by a meany-mosquito, and her hand was swelling up.

Sadly, as she's breastfeeding, there's nothing much she can take. Instead, we tried to take her mind off it by wondering what all the digging is about. It turns out that a large part of the Inn valley is being tunneled through to speed up rail travel from Germany to Italy. It's a massive EU-funded engineering project, probably bigger than the Channel Tunnel. The tunneling cognoscenti among you may be interested in finding out more.

Tuesday, we went to the Bergisel, Olympic venue, and one of the Four Hills in the eponymous annual ski-jumping tournament. We had a nice lunch in the cafe at the top and admired the view, especially of the big scary ramp. The view of the cemetary behind the end of the out-run is impressive, and must be a good incentive for the jumpers not to go too far.

We left the Inn valley after a week's stay. All together, we had a really relaxing time, and a happy family time.

Tchüss!