Day Three: Bregenz

It was a beautiful sunny morning when we woke up in Triesenberg this morning

We didn't feel up to another Liechtenstein hike, so our plan was to have a more sedate day with a trip to Austria. After breakfast in the hotel, we set out to the local bus stop where we planned to catch a bus down to Vaduz. In Vaduz we needed to change to a second bus, which would take us to the small Austrian town of Feldkirch, from where we would be able catch a train to our ultimate destination of Bregenz.

I was therefore rather annoyed when the promised 09.29 bus to Vaduz didn't arrive on schedule, eventually turning up around 10 minutes late. We'd only had a window of 6 minutes to connect to the second bus, so this threw my carefully planned journey into chaos... It turned out that I needn't have worried though; Liechtenstein seems very Swiss when it comes to public transport and if one bus is slightly late the other buses wait for it to enable people to make connections. We arrived in Vaduz and were able to jump straight onto the bus to Feldkirch, which got us to the station just on time for our train to Bregenz.

The train to Bregenz was a small regional one, so it was a bit crowded on a Saturday morning, but we made it there and by midday we were getting our first view of the Bodensee (Lake Constance).

There was a nice easy promenade path which we were able to follow from the station along the side of the lake.

The only problem was that it was a cycle track as well, so we had to be careful not to get in the way of bikes at times.

As we walked along we could see the town of Bregenz in one direction...

...while behind us we had glimpses of snowcapped mountains.

It was definitely a less strenuous walk than yesterday

The lake was beautiful, although I wouldn't have fancied swimming or paddling here as some people were.

It's not very clear in the photo, but in the far distance we could see all the way to Lindau in Germany.

And the further we walked away from Bregenz, the more snowy mountains we could see behind us.

The lake, of course, is huge so this wasn't a circular walk  Eventually we had to turn around and walk back into Bregenz.

The town itself is really attractive.

There were lots of pretty little streets...

...a beautiful onion-domed church...

...and some really old-looking buildings.

I particularly loved the colour of this purple building.

We found an Italian restaurant where I had an enormous pizza and Tim had pasta bolognaise for a price which seemed really cheap compared to the cost of food in Switzerland and Liechtenstein  Then we just had time for another stroll around Bregenz before heading back to the station to catch our train back to Feldkirch.

We had about 20 minutes to kill in Feldkirch before our bus back to Liechtenstein, so we had a quick walk around there too. It looked like a pretty little place that might be worth visiting another time.

Overall it's been a lovely day and much less tiring than yesterday