Monday, November 23, 2009

Innsbruck, Austria (#9 Germany)



We saw some very beautiful sights in Austria, but Innsbruck wasn't really one of my favorite spots. The city was much larger than I had pictured it in my mind and very crowded. But the day wasn't a complete waste as we did venture into Italy from here and found a very pretty town, not to mention the beautiful countryside we traveled through on our way there.

When we first arrived in Innsbruck, we were approached by a very persistent carriage driver wanting to give us a tour of the city outside the old town (they aren't permitted to enter the old section of town with their carriages). We decided to go for it, mainly because none of us could understand him well enough to realize what we were getting ourselves into.
Our guide took this picture of the four of us in his carriage.

This is the only picture I took on our ride. It reminded me of the Arc de Triumph.


Our driver tried very hard to give us a real informative tour, but as I said before, we couldn't understand him. He was constantly asking us if we understood what he said and we soon learned that if we answered in the negative, we only got a long repeat of something that we still couldn't understand. So we learned to just smile and act as if he was giving us some wonderful information that was greatly enhancing our visit to Austria. He was not even Austrian. He was from Bulgaria!

This is our first view of the old town area of Innsbruck.


An ornate building in Innsbruck's old town.


My token picture of myself by a fountain.


This is Peggy by an amazing mime. That girl stood upon the pedestal, perfectly still the entire time we were walking around Innsbruck!
The hotel in the background (with the gold-leafed roof), is where Liz and Greg stayed the last time they visited Innsbruck.


Street view.


I loved this shop sign. We all took several pictures of clever shop signs throughout our entire trip because they were all so cute and unique.


View of the hills around the town.


Beautifully carved building.


I liked the paint job on this building.


The next 2 pictures are random shots of the streets as we walked along.



We did meet up with a very nice missionary couple as we toured these streets. They were from Utah and were working exclusively with the youth in Innsbruck.


1 comment:

E said...

Oh man, I know a thing or two about getting trapped into a bad tour in a big touristy-trap city. Glad you liked Innsbruck despite all that!