Fun in Innsbruck

We arrived in Innsbruck really late. This is because we took too long eating dinner at the Salzburg Castle and then got lost on the way back to the hotel. We took a city bus that we thought would take us to the right street but found out half way through the ride that it was going the wrong way. We got off and had to walk quite far to get back on the right track. We finally found our way.....thanks to the GPS! Once we got back to the hotel we recovered our suitcases from the storage room and walked to the train station.

We could not resist some yummy frozen coffee treats while waiting for our train :)

We arrived in Innsbruck at midnight and since the map showed that the hotel was close we decided to walk. We were lucky that we chose a very safe city to do this in. Since it occurred to us later that we really stood out as tourists walking the almost empty city streets at midnight and pulling two suitcases :-P It took as a bit longer than expected to find the hotel. The GPS was showing us a wrong spot and after walking up and down the same street two or three times we finally walked into a bar to ask for directions.

After finally finding our hotel we settled in for the night and.......I could NOT sleep AGAIN!!! I tossed and I turned, I tried to read, I turned off the light.......nothing! I finally fell asleep between 4 and 5am. Getting up for breakfast in the morning was not easy OR pleasant!

After breakfast we decided to first go up the mountain in a cable car. We heard that the weather was suppose to turn rainy the next day. As it was the clouds were pretty low. Innsbruck has a new and awesome system for going up the mountain. It goes up in three stages. The first cable car is more like a train.....it goes on rails but climbs very steeply. In reality it is pulled by cables which run at the bottom of the track. The second and third stages are the traditional cable cars. We went up to the second station but decided to not go any higher as the clouds were too thick to see anything.

 

The views from up there were breathtaking!!

Of course we had some more hot tea and coffee up there :)

Top of the 2nd station

Snow in July ! :)

 

Before our Europe trip Steve read a lot about the Svarowski crystal factory and really wanted to go there as it sounded very interesting. The factory is located right outside the city of Innsbruck and there are buses which go there from different points in the city. So on the way down we got off the cable car at the second to the last station which was nearest to one of the Swarowski bus stops. Except we couldn't find any information about that particular bus on the sign..........and Austrians are usually really good about signs!! There was a young couple with a baby there as well waiting for the same bus. Then some young tourists from Russia joined us as well. Together we managed to figure out that we were not at the right bus stop and managed to find the right one in time for the bus :)

The ride to the Swarovski factory took about 30 minutes and I managed to catch a small nap on the way :)

I have to report that the whole Swarovski experience was disapointing. We were hoping to see the actual factory and maybe learn a bit about how the crystal is made. That did not happen. Yes there were some cool things made with crystal that were fun to see. BUT most of the complex is really a big underground modern art museum that sometimes refers to the Swarovski crystal but more often than not has no relationship to it at all. And it is all very strange. At least that's what we thought......then again neither me nor Steve get the modern art stuff!

Here is some of the cool stuff at the Swarovski museum

After couple of hours we left the Swarovski complex, got on the bus and headed back to Innsbruck. We did some sight seeing around the city. It was raining and got a bit cold so we had to stop for some good Austrian food and beer :)

Siteseeing in Innsbruck

Yummy Dinner :)

 

Can anybody please tell me what this thing below is?? ;))

 

After dinner we tried to do a bit more sight seeing but it was getting more rainy and colder and we were getting sleepy (finally!!) so we headed back to our hotel. We fell asleep at the reasonable hour of 11:30pm AND...........got woken up at 3am by the malfunctioning air conditioning box in our room which started making a horrendous noise!! You should have see how fast Steve can jump out of bed when awoken by a strange sound!! LOL At first we had no idea where the sound was coming from and thought that it was a fire alarm. But soon Steve with his engeneer's mind figured out that one of the lines that carry water to the system got frozen. He tried to disconnect the darn thing but couln't. So I pulled on some clothes and walked down to the reception desk. The night reception guy was very friendly and nice but spoke very little English and knew even less about air conditioning systems. He tried to help. He walked up with me and then both him and Steve rubbed their chins over what to do with the crazy thing. Finally, the guy figured out how to switch off the circuit braker to our room. That finally killed the noise......and our electricity!! So he offered us another room. We did not want to move our stuff in the middle of the night so we decided to stay where we were and worry about the electricity problem in the morning. It took as a while to fall back asleep. But finally we did......around 5am :/

The next morning they turned our electricity back on and the noise was gone. Steve says that the thing defrosted. After breakfast we packed up and got a taxi to take us to the train station.

Off we go to Venice, Italy!!! See you all there :)

 

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