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On the train, again. En route to Innsbruck, Austria. This is the end of the cultural part of our vacation. Off to the natural & physical component.
Shocker, guess who's sleeping. Moe is a fab travel buddy. |
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WELCOME TO INNSBRUCK |
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| Innsbruck, our first real introduction to the alps. Moe is pulling her Mary Tyler Moore in the big city routine, except it's not a big city but a popular snowboarder destination. |
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| This place has spectacular mountain views, but not much else. It's in the valley on the edge of the Austrian Alps in the province of Tirol, specifically between the Northern Limestone and Central Alps. |
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| THE RIVER INN. Got a little carried away with the river moutain view pics. It was cool to see chunks of ice flowing down river. |
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Like most European cities, there seemed to be a walking street somewhere. This one had a fairy tale theme up in the windows. |
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| As far as we could tell, Innsbruck only exists as a place to sleep for the snowboarders and skiers, & then maybe eat. But every year, the city knows how to throw a damn good party to close out the old and bring in the new (year, that is). |
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Four stages around the city centre, food & drink stalls everywhere. The night sky lit up for a good 30 minutes leading up to & after midnight. |
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The coolest thing had to be the houses up on the mountain tops shooting off rockets and the glow from the burst reflecting off the snow. |
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| Enjoying the city centre atmosphere. |
Tents and people packed in the streets drinking |
Above: The GOLDENES DACHL (Golden Roof). Very famous for Innbruck. It's not even made of gold; 2,657 copper tiles. Thanks Max I for being so cheap. |
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Heading out for our first day of snowboarding. We gathered inspiration from the old Olympic ghosts of 1964 & 1976. |
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Now anybody who's ever been skiing will recognize that you can find this slope in your backyard. This was actually the hill at the bottom of the mountain that they sent us to after we arrived at the Olympic Express (yes, where the Olympic athletes did their record breaking runs). |
BELOW: Fred's attempts to snowboard. At some point he was actually up on the board, perhaps we have footage of said event. |
ABOVE: Moe eats some food for energy to tackle the slopes.
VIDEO TIME: Click hot spots! |
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| Tired of getting the wind knocked out of her like a ketchup bottle, for the second day on the "slopes," Moe opted to hone her sledging skills. That's right not sledding...sledging. |
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Her first time ever on one of these things. She's not half bad compared to the five year olds who shared this slope with her. |
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CAFE KONDITOREI
This became our home for the day. We were out of the hostel on our last day in town; came back from the slopes (spanky style) & need a place to dry our feet. This place happened to have the best hot chocolate since Prague. The best thing about European restaurants was that they don't rush you out after your meal, though we think we may have overstayed our welcome. But hey, we needed to wait until our socks dried. |
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In fairness, this hostel was pretty damn bad. Lonely Planet let us down on this one. |
| But haven't said that, LP did say that it was a place for the snowboarding and skiing types. |
And that's pretty much what everybody did all day. Then came back with their funkdified stuff and hung it up everywhere. It reminded us both of dives for (SCUBA) divers, so we could understand the lack of amenities. |
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And we bid farewell to Innsbruck. As unpleasant as our hostel was, our stay in Innsbruck was quite lovely. We came for snowboarding & got snowboarding, & then some.
Now we're off to spend the night at the train station as we await our evening train from Innsbruck to Interlaken, Switzerland. What to do with all that time.
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