Graz, Austria

Although Austria was not in the original plan, the offer to stay at Marcel's pad in Graz was hard to resist, and it is on the way (sort of).

Local Austrian food, mushroom soup and a bun... no wait, soup in a bun!



The famous double spiral staircase. Messes with your mind.

The second day it rained heavily so our only real achievement were to meet Cris Lovell-Smith at the train station (he'll be travelling with us for the next few weeks so you can get both sides of the story by reading his blog too - http://cris.lovell-smith.com/trips. If he says anything bad about us, it's all lies) and checking out the awesome lab where Marcel works. We played in the 3D virtual reality simulator, which made us feel quite seasick quite quickly.

On our last day Marcel took us on an adventure to a nearby gorge, where the Austrian Alpine Club has set up a staircase of wooden ladders spanning the 800m climb. It was awesome! We then did a circut around and over a hill to find the dragon's cave. No dragons, but lots of mud and good photography opportunities.

Photo courtsey of Marcel. With two super-keen photographers about Mark and I got lazy.