Lost Together: Innsbruck, Austria

As usual we got in fairly late the first day. The hostel we stayed in had a kitchen so we picked up some pasta and made a warm meal. Around 10pm we went for a walk along the river into the old town. Innsbruck is a very beautiful city full of bike and walking paths.

The next day we did our own city tour based on a free city guide. We checked out a beautiful church (Dom St Jacob) with paintings covering the ceiling. It was one of the nicest we have seen so far on the trip.

The city is pretty small so it was easy to see all the major sights on foot one day.

Here is an Arc de Triumphe. If you look through the middle, you can see the ski jump from the 1964 and 1976 winter olympics in the background. (Well, if you look through it in the other direction, haha)

We found a shop that rented bikes for a decent price so we picked up a couple for the afternoon. We crossed an old wooden bridge and climbed up into the hills near the zoo. Later on Jesse converted his bike into a "Motorcycle" with a piece of paper... He got quite a few weird looks cruising around town, haha.

Along one of the paths behind our hostel we found a public climbing rock so of course we had to stop and give it a try.

On Tuesday we spent the day at Schloss Ambras, the castle perched above the city. We ate lunch in the beautiful courtyard and garden.

Inside the castle there are several museum exhibits. The first is another armory. It isn't as big as the one we visited in Salzburg, but it was still interesting.

We found the best part of the museum to be the "Museum of Curiosities". It was sort of like a 16th century freak show. It was full weird pieces of art that had been collected throughout the life of the castle. There was a clear fascination with midgets and giants. (Sorry for the lame explanation, I'm tired...) We didn't get any good pictures of the exhibit either.... haha good post....

We finished the afternoon by stopping at the big Swarovski jewellery store. The family company was actually founded in a small town just outside Innsbruck. We also spent a lot of time wandering around the old buildings in the downtown area.