The West Coast of the United States is a popular road trip destination among tourists and locals. Driving from South to North (or vice versa) will offer spectacular views, amazing national parks and vibrant cities. From Los Angeles to San Francisco you’ll either drive along the scenic and legendarily Highway 1, or along the faster inland route Highway 101. One of California’s most beautiful cities lies along the way: Santa Barbara.

It’s not for nothing that Santa Barbara is a fancied wedding destination and a popular weekend getaway for towners. There are plenty of reasons: the superb location along the ocean, the beautiful beaches of its surroundings, the European-Mediterranean architecture and of course the hiking trails. Santa Barbara offers some of the best day-hikes in California.

Beach Hikes In Santa Barbara.

A hike along Santa Barbara’s beautiful coastline is a must. Clifftop trails offer breathtaking views of the Pacific Ocean. Harbor seals are a common sight and if you’re lucky, dolphins and even whales can be seen not far from shore. Some of the hikes are along the beach while others are on the top of beachside bluffs. Watch out for high tide through, because some of the beach trails can be inaccessible or your return trip can be cutoff during high tide.

Santa Barbara has some amazing beached along the Central California coastline with a Mediterranean feel.

The Golden State is the perfect getaway spot.

Watching the surfers while walking along the coastline of Santa Barbara can be really relaxing.

Mountain Hikes In Santa Barbara.

Just behind Santa Barbara County lie the beautiful Santa Ynez Mountains. This range forms a stunning green backdrop for the American Riviera as Santa Barbara is often referred to. There are many trails along these mountains, visiting quiet canyons & waterfalls, and several tranquil overlooks with stunning ocean views. Keep an eye out for poison oak and bring plenty of water!

An early morning hike in the mountains of Santa Barbara County is strongly recommended to soak up the atmosphere and to recharge your batteries.

Whether you’re experienced, or prefer shorter walks, Santa Barbara offers hikes for every fitness level.

This August: Celebrating Its 80-Year-Anniversary.

Long stretches of this road were made of cobblestone, an everlasting material that withstands extreme cold and heat. Today, asphalt replaces cobblestones but you’ll still see & feel the history along the road. There are two side trips one can take while driving along the road. One is the drive up to Kaiser Franz Joseph Höhe (In 1856 His Majesty Emperor Franz Josef and Empress Elisabeth (Sissi) came hiking to the spot and that’s where the name originated) from where you have a beautiful panoramic view. Once you get there, you stand right opposite the Grossglockner with a view down to the longest glacier in the Eastern Alps, the Pasterze. The second side road leads to the Edelweisspitze. Both of these are heavily frequented on sunny weekends, so it’s best to get up there early in the day.

If you intend to spend some time hiking in the area, you’ll come across several accommodation options. Most of these are mountain refugees with limited basic rooms, but what do you need beside a bed and a shower when this area is in front of the doorsteps? Be sure to make a reservation by contacting the owners beforehand, otherwise you might have to spend the night outdoors…

Grossglockner High Alpine Road Facts.

Opening Hours:

• Beginning of May until 15 June: 6.00 am – 8.00 pm
• 16 June until 15 September: 5.00 am – 9.30 pm
• 16 September until end of October/beginning of November: 6.00 am – 7.30 pm
• Last admission: 45 minutes before night closure

Rates (day ticket):

• Car 34.50 €
• Motorbike 24.50 €

The Grossglockner High Alpine Road is the highest surfaced mountain pass road in Austria. We were there on the first opening day, May 1.

48 kilometres of high alpine road with 36 bends and an altitude ascent to 2.504 metres at the highest point are just a few fact about the Grossglockern High Alpine Road.

The road is named after the Grossglockner, Austria’s highest mountain.

The road up to the Edelweissspitze is a winding one. Up there, you can enjoy a lovely meal at the Edelweisshütte with a fantastic view of the surroundings.

The serpentine curves make the Grossglockner High Alpine Road a popular destination for motor bikers.

In the years 1936 and 1937, 350 men shovelled 250,000 cubic metres of snow in an average of seventy days to keep at least one lane on the Grossglocker High Alprin Road free. Today, modern machinery does the job.

The Grossglockner High Alpine Road connects Bruck in the state of Salzburg with Heiligenblut (seen on the photo) in Carinthia.

This was all a spur of the moment idea; part of the vicious cycle of making every adventure more thrilling than the last. January was the off-season, or rainy season, for the Andes so the wilderness would be completely desolate. The three friends hoped to be the second group to complete this trek on bikes. However, they underestimated the relentless weather they would encounter as they traveled for a week above treeline.

The friends tagged first descents down rocky couloirs and 16.000ft passes, watched sunrises against the tallest peaks in the country, and slept to the sounds of serac fall at night.

In the end, they didn’t quite make it as far as they had hoped. Between rain storms, concussions and waving guns the Huayhuash had ripped at their eager ambitions. A sense of wonder was fulfilled and the friendship of three adventure loving friends was reinforced. Huayhuash is the story of genuine adventure and the challenges that come along with it.

If you’re interested, you can read all about their adventure here.

There are countries that are easy to travel in without a car. Not Oman. If you want to see the countryside of Oman you definitely need to rent a car. Best is to get it right upon arrival at Muscat airport. Pre-booking makes it a lot cheaper and you also get unlimited mileage (if you rent directly from the companies you only have 200km included per day).

Experiencing the countryside of Oman with a good 4×4 SUV is the best way.

2. Map.

It’s not easy to find a good map of Oman, but at least get any kind of map. One of the things that we noticed is that street signs are often  missing or sometimes the pointing of the arrows are unclear.

If you have a smart-phone just can get a phone card and then simply connect to Google maps – this can be handy at times, especially when driving through the desert or remote mountain regions. Keep in mind: for desert driving, check the map before because you’ll lose reception a lot. Plus one should have some desert-experience when doing this alone.

Street signs in Oman can sometimes be unclear, therefore be sure to bring a good map on your travels.

3. Accommodation.

In Oman you won’t come across various accommodations in every village, so you should better check out the places beforehand. Accommodation is pretty limited – which is good and bad at the same time. Some towns have “local” hotels that are cheaper than the ones found on the internet, but they are very rare.

If you’re adventurous enough, you can just camp instead. It’s great to spend a night out under the stars but of course you need some preparation for that as well…

4. Roads.

All the main roads are in excellent condition, but there is a lot of road construction going on, so signs are often non-existent or placed a bit confusing … if you miss an exit the highway you might have to drive 30km to turn around again. Also, it can be difficult to reach the other side of a town because there aren’t that many over-passes. We got lost a couple of times…

The unpaved trails through the mountains can be challenging at times, so one should have at least a bit of off-road driving experience – plus avoid driving when it’s raining cats and dogs. On the other hand the paved mountain roads can be very steep and you’ll come across road signs to switch into a lower gear. Don’t ignore these and drive moderate because the declines are sometimes really steep!

The street out of Muscat is in excellent condition, but be sure to know where to get off, because the next exit might be over 30km away.

It’s really amazing to see the progress of streets across Oman. You will come across amazing mountain valley with paved roads, even though there is no sign of a village for many kilometres.

Unpaved mountain roads in Oman definitely require a 4×4 car.

5. Food.

Muscat has huge supermarkets, so before you set out we’d suggest to buy some water, toilet paper and other essentials. In larger towns you’ll also supermarkets, but if you visit remote places you’ll be lucky to even find a little shop.

Restaurants are mostly run by Indians and serve great cheap curries of all variations with rice or Indian bread. This food is always fresh even if the place is small and doesn’t look very frequented … a lot of people order by phone and get it take-away. They just tend to look uninspiring, but they serve amazingly good food!

A simple home-made salad can save the day…

6. Petrol.

Nothing obvious here: A very great bonus is that petrol is so cheap in Oman. One liter costs roughly 0,30 € (!!!). Fill up your tank before heading off the beaten path because distances can be really long and the next petrol station might be hundred of kilometres away…

If you’re planning a trip here, be sure to read the following article because we will only give you authentic and honest feedback on our impression of Yangshuo. Forget Loney Planet on this. We built on the writer’s impressions and fell flat on our face! What’s up Lonely Planet? Where are the honest words we got in previous guides?

Anyway, our insight won’t be embellished but only true and straightforward. I wish I had read an article just as honest before planning this trip because my destination would have definitely altered.

First impressions count.

We arrived in Yangshuo at 1am with the sleeper bus from Guangzhou. The bus ride itself was pretty comfy. If you’re not overweight or claustrophobic, it’s a great way to get a good night sleep and travel at the same time. So arriving in Yangshuo with heavy rain and no lights near the bus station was not good for a nice first impression. Luckily we knew where we wanted to go: Explorer Hotel. I read the Lonely Planet travel guide before and it said, that Explorer Hotel it was a cute & quite mid-range hotel. So we beckoned the local tuk tuk driver over and were on our way. During the 10-minute ride there, we started realizing, that this town was not a sleepy little Chinese village as we expected … Turning into the street of Explorer Hotel, it was one bar to the next with bright neon lights and loud techno music – with binge drinking highly appreciated. Seriously?! The tuk tuk driver also pissed us off when he tried to rip us off but we couldn’t be bothered and gave him the 10 Yuan more. After all, it’s been one hell of a long day and it didn’t seem to get any better.

No fatties allowed in the sleeper bus from Guangzhou to Yangshuo.

After checking in, the reception lady said that our room was on the third floor … and there was no elevator. Great! Two 20kg bags (one in each hand) and up we were … only to realize, that the room was already taken by someone else. Now I started to get a little grumpy. Ulli was a bit calmer since she had been on a four-week trip through Bangladesh and therefore wouldn’t lose her temper easily. “So sorry Missy, please take room in first floor.” So we did. The room was clean with two large beds, A/C and a nice bathroom – at least this worked out, otherwise I would have needed the consultation of a Chinese Psychologist.

It can’t get any worse, can it?

The sky cleared up the next day. It was cloudy but at least the rain stopped. Still a bit edgy from what we saw last night, we wanted to give Yangshuo a second chance. It’s said that everyone deserves a second chance …  yeah … who in the world ever wrote that crap?! It was even worse than the night before. Imagine Rimini in Italy. Phuket in Thailand. Kuta in Indonesia. Or Downtown Siam Reap in Cambodia. Multiply this by 100 and you get Yangshuo in China.

West street in Yangshuo has a scary resemblance to Kao San Road in Bangkok …

I really started wondering on why I wanted to come here so badly and remembered the most amazing BBC Documentary “Wild China” where Guilin and Yangshuo were described as “the most beautiful spots in China”. Yeah sure, if you have the cash to fly in with a helicopter, shoot scenes from above or land in uninhabited placed. But reality looks very (very !) different: Huge highway roads. Tourist vendors along all the streets. Thousand of bamboo raft boats on the Li River. Bars and fast food places. Gigantic hotel building blocks. And of course, thousands of tourists. No sight of traditional China.

Even the fisherman with their cormorant birds were fake. Sure, they exist but they’re just another tourist attraction. These fishermen don’t make their money by selling the daily catch on the local market anymore. Much rather, they wait along the Li River for tourists to pass, who pay them to display their cormorant birds. By the way, the birds also look a bit pissed since no one lets them catch fish anymore…

A fisherman with his Cormorant waiting for customers.

I hope I was able to give you an insight on our impressions. Clearly you need to see a place yourself to fully understand the words but I think we did a good job filling in the blanks. Yangshuo once was a beautiful town worth a UNESCO World Heritage Site but obviously the development of the last 30 years didn’t make the area any better (in our opinion); the view of the karst mountain landscape is interrupted by signs, electric wires, (lots of) plastic rubbish and all sorts of tourist attractions. One thing is for sure … to get the picture perfect shot; you’d have to be a master at Photoshop.

Appearances can be deceiving.

All in all, the first day here had a few down sides but also a very nice up side: Moon Hill was fantastic. This place needs muscle and stamina to access so the crowds up there are thinning. Other than than, we also visited the Silver Cave, which was a nightmare as well before heading up North to the Dragon’s Backbone rice terraces – definitely the highlight of our trip!

Since I know that many of you are still waiting for a real winter, I wanted to post a couple of winter wonderland photos of the landscape around Vienna. Enjoy and daydream. I’m sure we’ll have a tough January & February…

The Vienna Woods can turn into a real winter wonderland.

Hard rime can only be seen very rarely around Vienna. It’s a white ice that forms when the water droplets in fog freeze to the outer surfaces of objects. It is often seen on trees atop mountains and ridges in winter, when low-hanging clouds cause freezing fog.

The peaks and mountain passes of the Eastern Alps are lower compared to the Western Alps, while the range itself is broader and less arched.

The Erlaufsee is only about 1 1/2 hours away from Vienna and therefore popular for day-trippers.

I love the atmosphere in the Vienna Woods that comes with snow.

Eisenerz is a market place and old mining town in the Austrian state of Styria.

Winter landscape in the Alps in Lower Austria.

Frosty times during winter in the Vienna Woods around the capital city.

His goal was to capture the beautiful Milky Way galaxy and the surrounding of the mountain; and he managed to do a great job! Check out this video:

I work in the beautiful city of Vienna and since Austria is a small country, distances are easily overcome. Getting out of the city is simple and shouldn’t take longer than 30 minutes. I love being out in the country, especially since I grew up there…we live in a small village in the west of the capital city and the Vienna woods are right at our doorstep. A pure (Austrian) paradise!

Here are just a couple of impressions why I love being a “country-girl”:

The Green Lake (German: Grüner See) is located in Syria and is surrounded by the Hochschwab mountains and forests. The name comes from its emerald-green water. The clean and clear water comes from the snowmelt from the karst mountains. In recent year the lake has become a popular place for tourists and divers.

The Vienna basin and the Austrian sections of the Carpathian plains in the East are areas that feature green hills and plains, fields, wine regions, idyllic rivers and lakes as well as wide open steppe.

In the West os Austria, almost two thirds of the country is covered by high- and medium Alpine mountain regions with spectacular mountain ranges and majestic glaciers. Almost one half of the mountains are covered by forest.

The landscape around the Danube river northwest of Vienna (the area near Tulln) consists of forest and meadow land.

This place is in the heart of Upper Austria – the “breadbasket of Austria”. Some farmers rent out holiday apartments, so if you are ready for a quiet peaceful stopover for a few days, this is the area to go to. Taken near Wels.

The Vienna Woods are a 45 km long and approx. 30 km wide range of hills and a popular recreation area for the Viennese.

The landscape around Austrias highest mountain – the Grossglockner.

A mountain rising out of the forest in the Salzkammergut around Grundlsee in Salzburg.

During summer, cattle is driven up in the mountains where the lawns are fresh and the animals can stay outside all the time until autumn. As soon as snow arrives they’re back in the stables until next year. Taken in Hochreit, Göstling.

Hidden in the mountains there are little huts for hunters, forest maintenance as well as for tourists who rent these places to get away from it all for a few days. Taken in Hochreit, Göstling.

Horses enjoy the rich fields around the Vienna Woods.

This is just 20 minutes outside of Western Vienna. Rolling hills and fertile soil halted by large forests make the area a perfect getaway for a weekend not far from the bustling city.