Innsbruck

View from Bridge Innsbruck was named after


Standing outside an apres-ski lounge


The view from the lounge


Inside the Swarovski Crystal Museum


View from the top of NordPark Mountain (Innsbruck city and surrounding mountains)



Wolves at the Alpine Zoo



This past weekend I traveled to Innsbruck with friends I've met here. Laura, Leah and Brett are all from Edmonton, Canada and we had a great time on our quick weekend trip to Innsbruck. We left Saturday morning at 7 am, arriving in Innsbruck sometime around noon and stayed until Sunday evening. Innsbruck is a small city of about 100,000 people in Western Austria. It's hosted the Winter Olympics twice and is surrounded by the relatively large Alps. These mountains provide great views of the city and surrounding countryside.

The first day we took a tram around the city and ended up seeing the Olympic ski jump and went up to one of the mountains in an attempt to go sledding. However, they were closing soon so we just sat at a cafe and enjoyed the view. We went out to dinner in the old city area connected by pedestrian walkways. We were all pretty tired so we decided to go to bed after we got back to the hotel.

The next day we went to the Swarovski Crystal museum, which was actually filled with cool artwork and had various outdoor activities. Next, we headed up a mountain on the other side of the city on the fenicular (railway up the steep mountainside) and caught a gondola to the top. The view from up here was absolutely amazing, and made me wish I had more time to go skiing. However, there was also the Alpine Zoo lower on the mountain that we actually toward around on our way down to the city. We then walked around and headed towards the bridge that the town actually got its name after and took some pictures of that area.

Almost everything we did, including the museums, fenicular, gondola, zoo, public transportation, etc. were all included in this Innsbruck card that we purchased for 30 euros and definitely saved us a lot of money. It was money well spent on an enjoyable two day journey.

Note: If you click on the pictures you'll see the full sized image if you'd like to download them and save them to your computer.

As always it's taking awhile for the photos to upload so i'll have the link up soon. However, if you click on the prague pictures link you'll see new photos that I was finally able to upload.