Innsbruck
I've mentioned before that I loved boarding school stories when I was younger. One series in particular was called The Chalet School, about a young English girl who goes to Austria and sets up a school in a chalet on the shores of Lake Tyrol. I loved those books, even though I only read a fraction of the total series - seriously, there are like sixty books in the series! Actually, I keep getting the urge to read them again so I may have to dig them out from the loft next time I'm in Birmingham! Anyway. The reason I chose to make a stop in Innsbruck on our trip was for entirely geeky reasons - it's mentioned quite a bit in the Chalet School books as it's the closest "big" town. I didn't even realise the Tyrol and Innsbruck were real places for a good few years after I'd read the books! However it's not like we'd gone out of our way our anything... in fact, it made perfect sense to stop here on our way into Switzerland! But yeah okay, am geek.
When we got to Innsbruck, we navigated our way to the hostel fairly successfully. It was actually more like a cross between a B&B and a hostel, and was above a rather posh cafe/restuarant/cake shop. It was also about two minutes away from the centre of the town. The woman who runs Nepomuk's (the hostel) was the daughter of the woman who runs the cafe (Munding), and she was really nice and friendly. She gave us maps and circled all the places we might want to see, as well as telling us about a shopping mall that has a great viewing platform on the top floor. To get to our room we had to go up these really narrow stairs - Pete was carrying the cases because I had the whole ill thing going on. Also, he is stronger than me (he carried my bag up and down stairs more than I should probably admit). However, he is also taller than me and successfully managed to bash his head on a low sticky out bit of the ceiling. Aww.
The room we got was a private double in a flat. The flat had a kitchen, bathroom, two other bedrooms and a little covered balcony type area. The kitchen was stocked with all the basics like pasta, rice, oil, sauces... and we were told we could use anything we wanted! Which was nice. It also turned out that the other two bedrooms weren't going to be occupied whilst we were there, so essentially we had a whole flat to ourselves! This combined with the fact that the rooms were clean and tidy, the owner was absolutely lovely and it was a central location meant that I would absolutely recommend it to anyone who was going to Innsbruck. Although, in the winter I imagine it would be a bit busier so you possibly might not get a whole flat to yourselves!
After I'd finally made the beds.
As soon as nice lady owner had left us to our own devices, I collapsed onto the bed and fell asleep. There weren't even any sheets on the bed - they were piled up on the end with a little sweet perched on top! It didn't bother me though. Needed sleep. Will sleep on anything. So basically, thanks to me the entire day was a complete washout. I slept on and off, Pete sat outside on the balcony and read. When I eventually roused myself and made the beds I felt loads better. Even... hungry! Since we had a fully equipped kitchen, we decided to just eat in rather than have to find a restaurant and then try to pick the blandest, smallest meal on the menu for me. Pete went out to try and find a supermarket that would still be open (and on a Sunday!) so we could get some things like bread, pasta sauce, butter... stuff the flat didn't have basically! He eventually found one, although he had to go all the way back to the train station! So Pete had some pasta for his dinner and I had two slices of toast. And then, because those were so good and actually felt like they were going to stay down, I had two more slices. Possibly a mistake. We spent the evening reading, and then we started watching Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire on my iPod (which, for the record? Is bad. So bad. Uh, the film that is, not the iPod!). I got too sleepy halfway through and went to bed, but Pete watched till the end.
About three in the morning (again!) I woke up and felt a bit nauseated... the bathroom was the other side of the flat and I knew I wouldn't make it in time... so I grabbed the glass I had beside the bed (had water in previously) and threw up into that. I had a surprisingly accurate aim, and didn't get into a mess at all! When I was done with the puking (and there was no more room in the glass, ew) I carefully creeped to the bathroom to empty the glass and rinse it. Washed my face, got a glass of water (a fresh glass!) and creeped back into the bedroom. Pete hadn't woken up at all during this, not even when I was quite audibly chucking up next to him! However as soon as I reached the bedroom door I stumbled, spilt water everywhere and consequently scared the crap out of Pete. Oops. Got back to sleep fine though, so it was all okay really. And thankfully, that was the last of the throwing up on holiday. Good times.
The next morning I was feeling even better, but wary of eating anything whatsoever given that the toast had made me chuck the night before! We had been given some coupons for a free breakfast in the cafe downstairs, which turned out to be a rather lavish, extremely yummy looking breakfast. And all I let myself have, was the smallest nibble of a pastry. Sniff. After breakfast and stashing our bags in storage (Pete did this whilst I drooled over all the gorgeous cakes on sale and cursed my stomach to hell) we set out to explore the town. Innsbruck isn't that big, and isn't a huge touristy town so we managed to see all the major things before we had to catch our train in the afternoon. First, we went to see the Goldenes Dachl, which is really the main tourist attraction. It was built by some emperor in the sixteenth century to show of how rich he was.
Golden Dachl = Golden Roof
The streets surrounding the Goldenes Dachl are apparently the "old town" which basically means they're narrow and maze-like and filled with tall, old buildings! Just wandering around those streets we got to see loads of interesting buildings.
I know this building has a story, I just can't remember without looking it up.
Let's just focus on the pretty.
We also stumbled upon Hofkirche...
Although we didn't get to go inside and see the statue of Kaiser Rudolf and
his polished-by-lots-of-people-touching "codpiece"!
...and the Hofburg (Imperial Palace - again didn't go in).
After we'd wandered our way out of the old town, we headed for the mall the girl at the hostel told us about. On the top floor there's a viewing deck surrounding a tiny cafeteria (in which I'm guessing you have to pay an arm and a leg just for a cup of coffee). The view from up there is great there. The town is basically surrounded by mountains, so everywhere you look there are mountains.
And I love mountains.
It was kind of grey and a bit chilly when we were there, so there was a lot of mist hanging over the tops of the mountains, which made it look all the more mystical (no pun intended). After spending some time on the viewing deck, we came back down to earth, and had a wander round the surrounding streets... down past the river and just generally... around.
Clearly not too chilly.
We then headed over to the other side of town to go and see Bergisel tower - the Olympic ski jump that you can spot from pretty much anywhere in the town (well, except the old town with it's tall buildings...). We finally found our way to the bottom of the hill that the ski jump is on - having had to risk life and limb crossing a road on a really sharp corner (there was actually a mirror for pedestrians to see round the corner!) - and, yep started climbing. The way up was paved and fairly easy, but I was taking it slowly because of stomach issues. It wasn't far though, and then we were at the top of the hill, bottom of the ski jump.
Pete found out that they use it for dry jumps in the summer. Dry jumps! Eek.
When we got there we discovered that to get up to the top of the jump we would need to take a funicular railway. My favourite! Then we looked at how much it was going to cost us, and people, it was not cheap. AT ALL. So despite being promised great views over the city, we decided not to go up. We found a little pathway on the hill that had a good view over the city anyway though!
I wasn't kidding about all the mountains.
After coming back down, we decided it was probably time to pick up our bags and go over to the train station. On the way back we managed to successfully give people directions (go us!). When we were going to the train station, Pete spotted a toy shop and had to go in of course, Lego fiend that he is. He didn't find any though! So onwards to the train station and Switzerland!
Choo choo.
Even though I wish I hadn't been ill at all on holiday, I am glad it happened when it did. Innsbruck's so small that we didn't miss out on anything by spending the first day holed up in the B&B. It is however a really sweet little town. I would love to see it in the winter - even more so than Salzburg - just because I think all those mountains would look even more stunning. I think its tourist season is the winter rather than the summer too, what with all the skiiing and everything that presumably takes place. So yeah, glad we went, would like to go back in the winter, even though there's not a huge amount left to see! Wouldn't mind going on a mountain hike either, although I may (read: definitely will) have to get a bit fitter before that!