Yesterday I posted about the first half of our Christmas and New Year trip around Europe. We spent Christmas in Magdeburg in the former East Germany with our kids, one of whom is living there. On the 27th we caught another train. That took us to Munich where we were due to catch the next one, but it seemed they had signal issues and so it was going to be departing from München Ost (Munich East) station instead. We managed to get a local train to there and got on our original express train that was running late by then.
That train took us to Innsbruck in Austria. This is up in the Alps in the Tyrol region. It has hosted two winter Olympics. We saw some skiers walking around town, but there was no snow there. They had to go way up the mountain for that. We could see the ski jump just outside town.
After checking into the Hotel Maximillian near the old town we went looking for dinner and found some good fish at the Akropolis Greek restaurant. I had a local Zipfer beer.
The city centre was really nice with lots of old buildings and some pretty Christmas lights.
The next day we took the funicular up the mountain. This takes you up about 300m, but it actually starts underground before crossing the river. It is a modern system with cool stations and the cabins pivot as they hang from a frame. There were great views over the city. We were really lucky with the weather on our whole trip. It was sometimes cold, but we had no rain.
The funicular takes you to Hungerburg which does not have too much to offer apart from the views and access to some walks. We had a wander in the woods before getting some cake at the cafe. You can get a cable car to the top from there, but that was a bit expensive just for a quick look.
Back in town we wandered around a park that was set up for light sculptures in the evening. We saw something similar in Edinburgh last year so were not bothered about that.
Dinner was in Gasthaus Goldenes Dachl. This is in the old town next to the house with the golden roof, but it is quite a modern looking restaurant. We had seen that they had some veggie option. We had rich pumpkin soup for starter and then we had spätzle (egg noodles) and dumplings.
I can admit that I had never been to the opera before this trip, but there was a production of Ariadne on Naxos by Richard Strauss at the theatre and we could get some fairly cheap tickets. Those did put us right at the back, but we could see fine. We did read up on the story beforehand. It is a strange story where classical and comedy performers end up staging a show together. It was all in German with the text displayed on screens by the stage, so I could mostly follow that. It was definitely interesting with some striking music and a very impressive performance by one of the ladies who got to show off a bit.
There were lots of fairytale characters on display around the old town. A lot of displays in places like London can be quite commercial as they may advertise some movie, but these seemed more traditional. We found Innsbruck to be a very attractive place. It has an airport, so we could have flown there from London Gatwick, but we were happy to take a slower route.
We had two nights in Innsbruck before moving on, but I will continue the journey in another post.
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