Innsbruk

Last week, as we recovered from being in Madrid, Logan remembered that Monday Oct 3rd is a holiday – German Reunification Day. He has been wanting to get to the Alps, so he decided that it would be good to go on the weekend. He did some checking and booked a hotel in Igls, a small town in the hills above Innsbruk, Austria. We set out in the car on Saturday the 1st. We drove south out of Munich, on a route recommended by a couple of coworkers. We passed some great towns and lakes on the way – Achensee is a long, very deep looking lake with a mountain on the far side, small towns with several hotels & cabins at either end, and lots of sailing boats. Most of the buildings are Bavarian style, wooden construction and long roofs, porches and decks with railings and built-in flower boxes, all overflowing with geraniums and petunias. Beautiful!

We got to a spot in the road with the Panaroma restaurant, we pulled in and lunched there. From the road, it looks like there might be a good view from their terrace, and when you get on to it – wow! It overlooks the Inn valley, a thousand feet or so below. Picturesque rolling hills, small towns clustered around a church, cows in the fields, dots of forested land. mountains everywhere. I’m not sure that the pictures do it justice.

After lunch, we continued to Innsbruk. Literally means ‘bridge on the Inn’, the Inn is the river that occupies the valley. (I think the valley was carved by glaciers.) Absolutely gorgeous drive. Every once in a while there’s a huge building halfway up a near hill, typically a ‘schloss’ or castle of a past king or emperor.

Innsbruk itself is a very 70s-looking city, driving by on the autobahn. Lots of flat-faced apartment buildings in 70s colors, lot of industrial looking buildings interspersed. But the location! It is an alpine valley, with huge mountains rising all around on both sides of the valley.

We found our way up to Igls, after being slightly confounded by the construction in Innbruk, by the Olympic ice rink. Had to pull a few quick U-turns but we finally achieved the road we needed. Climbed up out of the valley on the south side, found the little town and our hotel. We stayed in the Hotel Astoria, nice place with an indoor swimming pool & sauna. We made use of those that evening, before dinner. In the afternoon we had walked some of the local walking trails, well marked and they ambled through the high valley. Our ‘package’ at the hotel included dinner & breakfast. I was happy to be back at the hotel for dinner, didn’t really want to be wandering around on the mountain roads in the dark and the rain and fog.

Sunday the 2nd it was just pouring down rain. So we decided to be tourists, and went to the local Schloss Ambras. Archduke Ferdinand the II had this build for his ‘secret’ wife, Phillipine Welser. She was of much lower station for him, so they married in secret. The place is big, and they have preserved a lot of the grounds so there are walking trails in the woods. We saw quite a great display of arms & armament, probably the best display we’ve seen yet. The collection is very well marked & the signs are in German & English. There is a large portrait collection, the wealthiest families of Europe and all their interrelations over the centuries is pretty well documented. We saw a couple faces that we’d just seen in Madrid, the weekend before. After we saw what we wanted of the insides, we walked the grounds for a while. The trails led past a beautiful waterfall.

We went into Innsbruk to get lunch and warm up. (Castles seem very cold, very open to the elements, and this one did not have any heat going in any of the stoves. It’s no wonder that they wore lots of heavy layers of clothes!) The Innsbruk old town, pedestrian area is small and very beautiful. We browsed the shops for a bit, ducking in out of the rain, then walked over the bridge, back through some of the big public garden – with roses in bloom, in what seemed to me to be dead of winter weather! Back to the hotel for dinner.

Monday morning it was not raining, but very foggy. I could not see any of the mountains. It was getting thinner in some spots by the time we finished breakfast & packed up, so we decided to take the cable car from just across the street, up the mountain. It was a great decision – about halfway up, we cleared the fog line & could see the mountains all around. When we got to the top, we could see that it had snowed the day before – heavy, wet stuff. Fortunately not too deep. We walked around for about 40 minutes, until the next car down. I want to go back in the spring, after the snow melts, and hike there. It was an amazing place to be!

The days this week are zooming by fast. Tuesday I met some IWC friends at a local theater, we saw the film ‘Stage Beauty’. Wednesday, Gayle came over & we worked on her business cards & information sheet about her Aromatherapy treatment. Logan & I went out for dinner. Today the weather is nice, I plan to get out on my bike. Tomorrow morning is Badminton – I played last week and liked it, so will incorporate this into my routine.

I hope to get the Madrid, Oktoberfest & Innsbruk pictures up soon. Will post when I do.