(Editor’s Note: Because this trip and our Christmas trip were so close together I didn’t get a chance to finish the posts before we left so these are coming out a little late, sorry about that)
Our second day in Innsbruck was essentially a slow climb to see Innsbruck at different heights, and it was completely worth it. We began our first morning in Innsbruck at the most obvious place, the breakfast table. Riveting stuff I know, but there is of course an embarrassing story attached to this. Something that I’ve learned from being in Europe is that the best way not to make a fool of yourself is if you run into something you don’t understand, simply wait and watch a native European do it and mimic them (this has the side benefit of having someone to blame if you still do it wrong…at least in your head). In this particular case there was an automatic coffee machine in the small dining area that made several different kinds of coffee (espresso, cappuccino, etc…). Depending on what you wanted you needed a different sized cup and for what I wanted I couldn’t find the right one. The problem was apparently everybody had already gotten their coffee. There was nobody to watch so I could either stand there and wait (which would be really obvious to the person that I wound up watching, not to mention creepy) or I could take a chance and wing it (to my readers of the lady persuasion, simply asking the teenage girls that were working there how this alien technology worked was not an option my male brain was willing to entertain). My gut said”this is a bad idea”, my caffeine starved brain said “me want coffee now!”, and logic simply said “get orange juice and save yourself a lot of trouble”. Obviously, the only course of action was to grab the biggest cup I saw and push the button for what I wanted. As it began filling the cup I could hear those immortal words, “You have chosen…poorly…” (that’s a line from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade for you non-geeks). Yep, this was the wrong cup, about two sizes to small I’d say. Crap. To make things even better there were now no less than three Europeans waiting for this stupid yank (I use the term loosely, I’m from the South) to take his overflowing cup of shame to his table and pretend he didn’t just do what they just watched him do. As it turns out there is a weird cultural misunderstanding at work here. I don’t know if no one does this in the States, but as far as I know we in the U.S. tend to put hot drinks in something other than glass (ceramic coffee cup, paper cup, that kind of thing). There were apparently some glasses in that area that were meant for what I wanted, and they looked like something you would put orange juice or water in. Sorry Europe, my bad :)
So with that illustrious beginning we headed out into Innsbruck with our Innsbruck pass and headed for our first stop of the day, which is an overlook at the bottom of a ski jump and then the ski jump itself has a cafe at the top. The view from the overlook is pretty spectacular.
There was also a history museum there that we visited, which gave us a good overview of Innsbruck’s background. In it was something amazing, called the “Tirol Panorama”. None of the pictures I took did it justice but essentially you climb a set of stairs onto a landing that is surrounded by a panoramic, 360 degree painting with actual landscaping that seamlessly connects to it. The three dimensional depth it gives is mind blowing. It was worth going into the museum just to see it.
Next to this museum was a ski jump that was part of the 1964 Winter Olympics. It was redone a few years ago so it’s a little more modern now but the jump itself is mostly original. The view from the observation deck was excellent, as was the warm drink in the cafe (the service, not so much. I think the guy we dealt with was having a bad day, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt). It was here that we learned that selfies with the mountains in the background basically washed everything out but our faces. Oh well.
From here we had to run back down to the bus stop move on to the next place we wanted to go, which was Ambras Castle. It’s been turned into a museum and what was in it ranged from “meh” to “really interesting”(this includes an original set of armor for a 7ft plus tall man and the corresponding sets for his young boys). There were a couple of awesome things in it though. The best of those was a huge great hall that honestly should be in a movie. In looking at information on what this site was actually called (Schloss Ambras) I found this really cool link on Google maps that gives you an aerial tour of the place. Click this link to check it out: Ambras Castle (Schloss Ambras)
There was another couple lingering around the “Spanish Hall” taking pictures. I think we were both waiting for the other couple to go away in order to get a good picture of the whole thing. My patience failed before theirs did so I only got about three quarters of it from the inside but you can still get an idea of how big it is. There was a lot of stuff in there to see but we couldn’t take pictures of all of it. From here we decided we wanted to head up to the mountain top ski lodge restaurant and have a late lunch with a view. Technically we weren’t at the very top as there was another lodge a little further up, but we got a really good seat, I think you’ll agree.
At first it didn’t feel too cold sitting out there, but once the breeze started up the Russians sitting at a table to our left even went inside, and that ladies and gentleman is the cue that it’s too cold to sit outside and eat.
After such a long day we decided to go back to the hotel and just relax for a while. We did eventually get hungry again and ventured out to find a small, apparently new, restaurant that was themed to be a wild west steak place. They nailed it, though I did have to explain what medium rare was. Enjoying each other’s company over a meal we hung out for a while a thought about what we would do on day three. We eventually settled on, “eat lunch earlier”.
