Innsbruck; but not as you remember it.

Today we were driving from Villach to Innsbruck – and a gorgeous day for it as it turned out. The rolling countryside is just spectacular as we drove around the NationalPark Hohe Tauren region.

The route wandered through loads of small villages, the names of which were lost on us, but the idyllic Heidi-esque countryside was not.

Meanwhile, my phone was going nuts with people back home all absorbed with this particularly modern clusterfuck! I’m posting this here so I’ll remember it. We were moderately concerned that our Australian credit cards and things would just stop working – which would totally blow my Travel Theory that ‘there’s very little you can’t fix with an internet connection and a credit card!’

Our drive had us travelling through Italy for an hour or so… if you weren’t paying attention, you’d miss it.

We decided to stop and have lunch in San Candido.

Went to a cafe with the most amazing deli attached – the charcuterie here was unbelievable! Sadly, we have no refrigeration and only a couple of days until we head back to Australia.

Schnitzels here were served with cranberry of all things? But my gnocchi wagyu ragout was really good.

As we continued our drive the scenery was still just lovely. It’s amazing how a beautiful four hour scenic drive passes in a blink compared to four hours caught in a snarl of concrete highway spaghetti or crawling in stop-start traffic.

First sight of the Europabrücke (Europe bridge), the famous elevated highway that passes between Innsbruck to the Brenner Pass – it was built in the ‘60s and in some sections is as high as 180m (570 feet!), it’s seriously impressive. I was told it was more impressive to drive along side it rather than on it, so we were hoping for some good views.

Mühlbachl – another cute little, blink and you miss it, town.

Our destination for the evening – Hotel Restaurant Grünwalderhof. Innsbruck has become crazy expensive so we decided to stay a few minutes out of town given we were arriving late in the afternoon and would have tomorrow to explore. I was also looking for something a little more rural and alpine, which this appeared to be, but I didn’t realise (probably due to the deceptive views of rolling hills on their website) that they were smack bang right beside the road we had been travelling. Seriously, there was the road, and pull into a driveway straight off into the gravel car park for the hotel. Thankfully, there was scant little traffic on the road as the evening progressed and my fears of a noisy night were for naught.

Urgh… again, a request for a twin room is met with a double bed. Thankful for the European habit of separate bedding. Lovely hotel though, filled with old photos and vintage furniture… a little notice about the steps and lack of elevator would have been good, I am going to have to do something drastic about this dicky knee of mine. :/

The view from our balcony… beautiful.

Dinner was a bit sad… I will not be unhappy to leave the land of the deep fried everything for dinner… but a bottle of sparkling rose seemed a fitting end to our journey – even if I did have to choose something sweet enough for Angus to want to share it with me!

Thankfully, the warnings I received about the Crowdstrike nonsense amounted to a big fat nothing burger for us – and apparently this is largely why:
🤣🤣🤣

Next morning we had a little time to go for a wander through Innsbruck, which was a sad disappointment. I had wonderful memories of strolling through this little alpine village, all flowery window boxes, and quaint little cafes and cute winding little streets – but the whole place was being ripped up, was full of high vis, jackhammers, heavy equipment and men yelling. :/ Don’t go back, you can never go back.

We had a bit of a poke around, I bought myself a hat (having lost my cap somewhere along the way), and Angus picked up his one quality souvenir he wanted to take home – some seriously good kitchen shears. I know it’s a bit of an odd choice, but in 1995, I bought some Wusthof knives and some kitchen shears for about 40 Deutschmarks, and I have had 30 years of solid use out of these (far more useful than the Swiss Army knife that I also bought home from that trip). Angus has started his knife collection with Japanese kitchen knives, but he wanted some German made kitchen shears. We have done a bit of hunting in Berlin and in Munich looking for kitchenwares when we found some time, but he hadn’t found anything that wasn’t either cheap and nasty made in China or good quality, but totally overpriced… (thanks Amazon for messing with our expectations). Anyway, he found some really solid shears – I think they’re even better than mine! So our poking around noisy Innsbruck wasn’t a total waste of time.

This building is known as the Goldenes Dachl or Golden Roof, very creative naming protocol there. It is considered the most famous of Innsbruck landmarks. It was completed in 1500 and is decorate with over 2600 fire gilded copper tiles; created for Emperor Maximilian I on the occasion of his wedding to Bianca Maria Sforza (yes, those Sforzas), the two of them used to look down from their little golden balcony to watch the peasants at festivals, tournaments and whatever else was happening in the mucky square below.

Traditional garments for local festivals – would you believe this women’s dress was only €900 and gaudy AF. I didn’t manage to see a price on the shoes.

On the left, for him, little lederhosen that any little tyke will outgrow in months €140 and for her a little cotton romper at €90. I have friends at home with little ones, but wasn’t even remotely tempted!

Angus looking very Australian in Austria.

Which weirdly enough was a bit of a theme here in the gift shops!

I think I found my new calling though… I need to open a speckeria in Brisbane!

Unsurprisingly in a place that is called Innsbruck (Inns Bridge), there is a river running through it called the Inn River. Given it was high summer and the snow was all still melting, the river was high and running swiftly.