My thoughts for today were to get to Austria. It really isn't that far away from where I am and it seemed like a reasonable thing to be able to do. I had talked to Erik earlier in the week and he said Innsbruck is not really that far away and has good things to do there so I did a bit more research and found they have a castle there on the outskirts of the town as well and I decided that was what I would do with the day. Since my previous two days had been so active I sort of needed to just let my legs rest a bit and see things by way of car more so than bicycle or walking.
I went to breakfast at the typical time and took my time eating and eventually Sid came down to breakfast and I offered for him to come along. He had never been to Innsbruck in all his visits here so the idea intrigued him. I figured that it would be good for me to have him along because I needed to rest a bit and having someone else along would make me walk slower and do a bit less than I might do if I was solo. This plan did work out to my advantage in the long haul so I was happy with the day. We left probably about 10:00am and the drive down was quite nice. We stopped over the border in Austria to buy a special sticker for the car that allowed us to drive on the Austrian autobahn without getting fined then continued on to Innsbruck. Sid said there was a good cafe to stop at on the way that apparently would overlook one of the towns but the cafe turned out to be closed for renovations so we had to just continue on. From the parking lot there were no good pictures to be taken but I could tell the cafe itself had some good views.
There was a very steep downhill ride that apparently had a lot of safety outlets for trucks that had break issues on the way into Innsbruck but we got there without much issue. Once the GPS had basically gotten us into town I turned off routing and just followed signs to the Zentrum and then to a parking garage for the auldstadt area of town which is the old town. It turned out the garage was a touch expensive still it was better than risking a parking space and getting towed for not knowing the rules.
Innsbruck was kinda neat. It is a city where most of the Bavarian region does not really have cites except Munich, still it was not a very large city though it did have its own small airport. We drove by the airport on the way in. After parking we walked to what appeared to be the old town area and guessed correctly. We verified by a city map and then sort of wandered around to see the area. We walked out to a statue on a high post after seeing the golden dome, which is really not a dome but a golden roof on a sort of outcropping from a building, still it was very nice looking. After the statue we walked back to the main pedestrian street and found lunch at a restaurant that mainly served pizza and had a couple pasta dishes. I nevver got the name. I had a pizza capricoccia which is one with ham, olives, mushrooms and artichokes and Sid had one with spinach and feta. The pizza was quite good. I accompanied with a small local beer. It was a decent lunch and both of us finished our whole pizzas. They were very thin crust and very tasty.
After lunch we found the two churches on the map, one a Jesuit church and the other Saint Jakob's Cathedral. Both were nice and I am sure Sid appreciated visiting them. From there we walked out past that statue I mentioned before so I could find the Triumphal Arch and take a couple pictures of that then the Olympic ski jump they have on the outskirts of town. Innsbruck is a former Olympic town from long ago, I think most recently in 76. I think they still have some serious ski jump competitions there each winter. Obviously there was no snow for jumping today. Indeed by the afternoon I am sure it had gotten to about 30c and was kind of humid too. On the way back in we wandered a bit and did some souvenir shopping before getting some really excellent gelato at a shop on the corner of the street we had lunch on. The girl at the counter was very cute and she made my ice cream cone into a flower with the way she put on the ice cream. I had coffee on the inside and bourbon vanilla as the petals. It was quite neat and also excellent gelato. We ate it in the shop then basically headed back to the car and got out of the garage.
After that we used the GPS to get us to the local castle, Ambras Shloss. It is basically a large palatial residence of the royal family of the Austrian region dating back from the 15th century. The rooms were all bare of any furnishings in general and they had used the palace as a portrait gallery of all the important nobles from the region. They had small armory museum which was cool to me because none of the pieces were behind glass so I could take reasonable pictures and the interior of the palace courtyard had a really interesting set of al fresco paintings that made the plain walls look much more detailed. The palace also had a small chapel that was nicely setup with ornately carved pews. Unfortunately, Siemens had rented out the spanish hall for some company function so we did not get to visit that part of the castle but they did discount my ticket by 3 Euros for the inconvenience. I liked the castle a lot. I think really it is fair to call it a palace and not a castle but I have learned to ignore those distinctions as fewer castles and more chateaus and palaces are what have survived out here. I prefer the stuff that looks like Warwick Castle in England but that type of structure just didn't survive the ages well.
In any event, when we finished the castle it was back to the car and on the road to the hotel. On the way back we spent a fair bit of time climbing the mountain out of Innsbruck behind a truck and several other vehicles going 10 miles an hour as a diesel truck could not seem to get going any faster. Fortunately things did speed up when we reached the point we crested the hill but then he got stuck behind a tractor and that still kept us slow until the trucks too a different route and we were able to pass the tractor. The remainder of the way back was relatively uneventful if the views were incredible in either direction.
Today was the day that Peter and Sabine and everyone have a day off and the hotel restaurant was not open for business to night. I guess this happens every Thursday which Sabine informed me of in the morning. So basically none of Peter's cooking tonight. Sid and I deciced we would go to Ettal and eat at a cafe there and we hoped to find Juliano but he wasn't at the hotel. We had gotten back at about 5:30pm and literally a few minutes after we did the skies started to open up in some serious downpour thunderstorms. We waited for a while hoping to find Juliano, hoping he hadn't hiked himself into some horrible place before the storms hit but eventually it was obvious he wasn't going to arrive at the hotel and the rain slacked up a bit. We got in the car and drove around a bit to see if we could find him but were unable to do so. Along the way we got stuck in a serious bit of storm that included hail as well as the incredible downpours. We had to pull over because the windows fogged over and the rain was coming down so hard it was impossible to see. We waited until the defroster kicked in enough then headed on to Ettal to the Cafe Edelweis. The menu was in German and I mixed up my words a bit so ordered a roast pork dish with two types of dumplings that came with a cabbage salad as well. I had two Ettaler Dunkel beers as well in the evening. The food was very good and not really all that expensive either. During dinner we had a couple more outbursts of rain but it had basically stopped by the time we left.
After dinner we drove to the hotel and I headed up to the room to type this in and call it a night.
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