Our Travels

Today we went to climb with Alexander who was my honey's best workmate.

Alexander was a fresher for climbing rocks. It was his fourth time to come here, also was the first time to climb with me ( the previous three times he climbed with my honey, when i was in China).

Today my honey taught him how to climb the rocks with managing the hooks. It was almost the same practice for the real climbing outdoor. This way needed have much more power and energy, as well as needed more skills and balance. Alexander could do it nicely at the begining, but with the roads getting more and more difficult, he could not finish the whole one, just only half. But whatever, he still liked climbing, and my honey also encouraged him to be a good climber.

My honey was teaching Alexander how to tie a knot...

Put the rope on the first hook.

Everything was ok, then began to climb...

Put the rope on the second, third, fourth.....hooks while climbing up.

You could see how tall the climbing wall was.

my honey's turn now...

Look, my honey was so sweaty, haha...

Coming down.

My turn now...

I was using the chalk to make my hands were not so slippery.

When I came down, i was already very sweaty. My arms and fingers were all very tired and painful.

I was protecting Alexander.

Our turn now...

Packing the rope when we finished climbing.

Two days ago, we took too long time for hiking, it made us feel very painful all over, so today, we chose sight seeing for relax.

As the weather was getting cold in the west of Austria, we decided to go to some place in the eastern half. That's why we chose Stift Melk (Melk Monastery) which is located near river Donau, right at the beginning of the beautiful Wachau Valley.

Before going to the monastery we took lunch in a nice restaurant overlooking the river Donau.

We ate vegetable salad...

and fish...

and pork with mushroom sauce.

It tasted very deliciously!

This was the entrance of Stift Melk.

Here really looked like a big park, although there were many visitors coming from all over the world, it was still very quiet and clean.

Many Austrian style souvenirs.

Typical ancient Austian style architectures.

The painting on the ceiling.

The inner yard of the monastery.

The entrance of inner monastery.

These paintings show the last days in the life of Christ.

The model of Stift Melk.

The big dining room, very beautiful.

From the top of monastery, we could see the charming sceneries aroud Stift Melk.

also could see a small part of River Donau.

The central church of Stift Melk from the outside.
Inside it was even more beautiful.

This painting on the top of ceiling of the ancient library.

One corner of the ancient library.

The very beautiful and deep church from the inside.

At the entrance of the souvenir shop.

On this poster you can see how nicely Stift Melk looks from the river Donau.

The nice park beside the monastery.

There were many different colours roses on the road sides.

and smelt good...

Walking too long time, needed have a good rest.

then continue walking...

This was my first hiking on the second day of my coming back to Austria. It was really a crazy way, because I should have a good rest, or just took some easy and short hiking, but I did not.

The Sparber mountain was very steep, totally we took about 6 hours (4 hours for hiking), almost could not believe I could survive. When I was going down, a small part of wet road made me fall down. fortunately it was not serious.

This hotel was just in front of the parking place, a very nice and cute hotel, many people were eating outside, and enjoying the beautiful sunshine.

Sparber has two peaks.
This is the left, lower peak.
We climbed the higher peak on the right.

After 2/3 regular hiking, the last 1/3 road had some special ladder ways...

The ladder ways were not difficult, and also not very steep...

On the 3/4 part of Sparber mountain, we already could see nice view of the beautiful Wolfgangsee...

Sitting on the top of Sparber mountain, the sunlight was very strong, so we had to apply more sun block lotion...

On top we had a nice view down on beautiful Wolfgangsee.

This was the thunderstorm clouds, according to the weather forecast, today might have thunderstorm, but actually did not!

On the way of going down the mountain, we saw many goats. This one looked very old, but it was strange that how it could reach the top of the house, because there was not any ladder around the house. My honey told me maybe it had good jumping talent, hehe...

Yong'an is my second hometown, because i grew up here. But for my honey, this city is still a little strange for him, although it is the second time to come here.

On the day before my honey left China, the mayor of Yong'an city and his wife specially invited and arranged us to Tao Yuan Cave. The mayor's wife went with us in person, and asked the best tour guide to introduce the famous scenery spot as detailed as possible. The main goal was to let my honey know much more about Yong'an, because on our wedding dinner, they saw our lots of pictures about the daily life in Austria, and found we all like travel and sports so much. That was the reason why the mayor decided to recommend Tao Yuan Cave to my honey, and hoped him would like the natural site of Yong'an.

However, we had not enough time to stay longer, it was very pity that we could not go to visit other beautiful scenery spots in Yong'an, so we had to leave them for the next time.

The entrance to Tao Yuan Cave.

Nice rocks.

This bridge is just after the entrance.

All the bridges and paths at Tao Yuan Cave were lovely and in excellent condition.

This is the famous Ray of Sky.

It had been written in the Guinness World Records.

The "Ray of Sky" is a very narrow gap between two rocks at Tao Yuan Cave.

It's a pity that the pictures can not show it so clearly, but it's really very narrow and it gave me a warning not to eat too much in the future or maybe I won't be able to fit through when we want to come here again in a few years.

This picture shows nicely how the various sights and view points are connected by those comfortable pathways.

It's just a pity that it was a bit a foggy day, so it was not possible to take pictures of the whole area, as all distant objects were difficult to see in the mist.

So beautiful green trees!

In Austria many of the trees are still without leaves at this time, but Fujian province is a lot warmer through most of the year.

This poem was written by Li Gang, whom was an ancient Chinese Prime Minister in Song Dynasty.

The main meaning of the poem was: Li Gang thought Tao Yuan Cave was a very beautiful place, and he was worried that there would not be many people visiting here.

However, nowadays, Tao Yuan Cave is more and more popular in China.

So nice and clean is Tao Yuan Cave!

I hope to visit many more places like this when I travel to China again with my honey.

This was my first time to climb the real rocks. Actually, I did not want to do it at the begining, because on the next day we would fly to China, I prefered to have a good rest at home. But my honey thought we should go outdoor in such a nice spring sunny day, and when we were in China, we would have not enough time to do some sports. I thought it was reasonable, so agreed with him.

Before this time, we always climbed indoor, it was quite different with the real one. Climbing indoor, we easly could take 5+ or 6-, but the real rock routes only were 2 to 3+, I already thought that it was a little difficult for me.

Besides, comparing with indoor climbing, when we climbed the real one, we needed carry lots of heavy things in our bags. It was also the one of the main reasons why I felt difficult to climb. Beause it was my first time, and I needed practise more to get used to the heavy weight and the real rock routes. But for my honey, he was much skillful than me, absolutely he could climb much faster than me.

We took about 5 hours to finish climbing the real rocks totally. When we reached the top of the mountain, it had already been dark and very cold. Then we had to put the lights on our heads, and spent nearly 1.5 hour to go down the mountain carefully.

This experience was really memorable for me, although I was extremely tired when we arrived home.

Can you guess how much the weight of my bag?

I could not stand straightly...

Carrying such a heavy bag, it was really very difficult to walk quickly, as well as was very easy to get tried and sweaty.

Climbing the real rocks needs being very careful for the security, it is not a funny game, so we must make sure everything is safe, including wearing the safety helmet...

The safety helmet is not so much for protecting you when you fall, but rather for protecting your head when stones should fall down from above.

And really on this day there were some deer crossing our climbing route above, and loosening some stones which fell down the mountain.

However, luckily the stones fell a few meters to our left, so we did not get hit by them.

Look, so complicated climbing tools.

My honey was protecting me on the top...

I was protecting my honey below...

The picture looks more dangerous than it was.

Most parts of the route were not too difficult to climb. But if you fell down you still could have get hurt seriously.

Today the weather was very fine, but very hot, about , could feel the early spring nicely!

After parking, we found many pear trees with nice flowers around, but the pear flowers did not smell good, haha...

Beside the pear trees, there were some peach trees, the flowers were much more nicer than pear flowers, and they were not smelly.

Walking on the street in Wachau, we found some colorful flowers, very beautiful...

Behind me, it was famous Donau river...

Looking at the Donau...

My honey and me were all enjoying the nice weather and nice hiking...

Climbing is always one of my honey's favorite sports.

" I am a powerful man!!!" haha...

At that time, my honey was talking with me...

What a cool man!!!

Here just was a small part of Donau. Because of againsting the sunlight, could not see it clearly...

On this mountain, there are some destroyed castles walls...

Standing at any places, we all could see the Donau nicely...

I like this kind of blue and clean sky...

We can see the Donau much more in this picture.

There were many rocks around the biggest castle, and we also could find many people climing there...

This was the biggest old castle in the Wachau, but it had already been destroyed so much...

My honey told me that one of the England kings once was put into this prison before...

I tried to find the feeling for staying in prison, haha...

Here was another small part castle, still could see the Donau clearly...

Haha, I was trying to pull the big stone down, not only using the hands to pull...

but also using my legs, haha...

This was the full picture for the castle.

My honey was sitting on the top of the big rock, and overlooking the Donau.

This afternoon, we went to the Mostbauer with my honey's dad. After eating, my honey and I went to the Pöstlingberg and Linz for short sightseeing.

This picture was taken at the entrance of the Mostbauer. It is a little bit blur, or can see the Pöstlingberg clearly.

This is the famous church in the Pöstlingberg. Last year, when i came here with my honey, we saw a couple taking a wedding in this church, very nice!

This is the music hall in the city center.

This is Linz city center square, a little like Vienna, but much smaller. We took some pictures from the different angles.

This is a China restaurant in the square, but I have never been there to try the chinese food, so I do not know how about the taste, haha...

Actually, this church is behind the buildings...

Half ancient buildings, and half modern buildings...

The busy street...

The city center in the sunset...

This is the arts museum. The shape of this building is just so so, not so much special, but i like the color of the lights in the dark.

This is a bank.

Today was the first day of CNY, my honey and me decided to climb mountain, because it had a good meaning in China, on such a special day, climbing higher, could let us have good lucks in whole year...hehe, it just was a saying, but we really hoped it could be true!

The weather was very nice and warm. In this year, spring comes quickly, now already can find much new leaves coming out everywhere...

My honey told me, maybe this time would be our last time to climb snow mountain, becuase the snow would melt soon in such a warm day.

As for the melting snow, it was really too bad, made the roads very slippery. When we went down from the top mountain, there was a small part slippery road, i fell down for 3 times, got very dirty with the wet mud.

Before we climbed the mountain, we had already felt too hot...

Because we could not make sure if there would be much snow on the top mountain, so we carried the heavy snow shoes, just in case we needed them...

The weather was quite good, so nice and blue sky, there were not any piece of clouds...

My honey and me wore the lovers shirts, the feeling was very nice.

Not ready to take the picture, but still looked so natural.

Just only climbed small part of the mountain, i had already been too sweaty.

But still had some breeze, made me feel much more comfortable...

Maybe the snows shoes were too heavy, and rubbing my heels for long time, so that my heels got hurt, and the skin was broken, very painful...

At that time, i thought i could not continue climbing, but fortunately, we had the medicine pasters, they were good for my wound.

Actually, the mountain was not very steep, but had too much melting snows, we had to keep very careful to climb...

I really did not like this kind of road, too wet, too slippery. If i was not careful, then my shoes and pants would get very dirty with much mud and some disgusting bull shits...

Really needed some rest, too tired...

It was the top mountain, totally we spent almost about 2 hours reach there...

The landscapes on the top mountain were very beautiful...

My honey and me enjoyed the nice views...

But it was very windy, and much more colder...

Began to take the picnic...

After eating, my honey lied down, and enjoyed the nice sunshine.Making some faces, let him look much more cuter, hehe...

I was also a little tired, and lied down for a while...For taking some pictures, still did not forget to make some poses...

Ready to go down the mountain...

I was much more careful when i was going down...

Now already could see nice sunset...

Today we went to Feuerkogel mountain, it was my first time to ski, very interesting, but also a little scared and fell down many times.

Contrary, my honey is good at sking, and very skillful. When he was only 3 years old, he already began to learn sking, no wonder he can do it so nicely. I really like watching him sking, very cool, and very charming, haha...

There are 3 grades for sking, blue, red and black. The black grade is the top one, very difficult, my honey has already reached this grade, so he is enough to be my coach. But it seemed that he was not so patient to teach me, just told me some basic skills at the begining, then he went sking around himself, and left me alone to practise again and again...

We took the cable car from the bottom of the mountain to the top...

My cute honey, haha...

Looking down from the cable car...

My heavy snow shoes! Just this pair of shoes, let my feet get hurt, very painful! I still need more time to get used to them...

Got ready to ski... At that time, I still was not so scared!

Still had some smile on my face, but later...

So careful...and felt a little scared now...

I fell down immediately, just only moved few steps...

It was very difficult to stand up, so I fell down again...

The weather was really very nice!

This cable car is to carry people from one ski place to another one. But I never took it, I was still not enough skillful to ski on the steep place, just only practise on the flat place.

These landscapes photos were taken by my honey, when he took the cable car...

It was difficult to take a nice photo when my honey was sking, because the speed was too fast...

But seemed my skill for taking photos still not too bad, haha...

Finishing the practice, i had already been very tired...

Now we were waiting for the cable car to carry us down to the mountain...

All the ski equipments, ours also were among them...

Too heavy ski shoes...

Packing the ski equipments, and got ready to go back home...

Changing the shoes...

The weather was just so so, and very changable.

Today, the main goal was to China embassy to do some important things, so we did not take so much sightseeing, just only visited the Schönbrunn.

Schönbrunn is the main place for Sisi living in her life. It is really a very beautiful place, but now it is winter, there are not colorful flowers and green trees, otherwise, in the other seasons, here will be much more nicer.

Walking in Schönbrunn, reminded me of the sences of SISI movie, but felt that I was dreaming, because i never thought that one day, I could have a chance walking in the imperial park and house, haha...

On the way to leave Schönbrunn, we found a small cute squirrel...

Finishing the sightseeing, we went to Nachmarkt to taste a kind of Austrian local food, Palatschinken.

Making faces made my honey look much more cuter and lovely, haha...

My honey ordered a sweet Palatschinken, actually there are many different style ones. But i tried this one, just so so, but my honey liked it...

This was a salty palatschinken which i ordered. I felt it tasted better...