Advertisement
Published: September 17th 2018
Edit Blog Post
Since we'd seen so much of Innsbruck yesterday before checking into the hostel, we had to walk quite a ways to see our first sight. Heading towards the one place I wanted to visit, the Glockengiesserei, or Church Bell Museum and Factory, we passed by a few new sights, especially on Marie-Theresien Strasse. The Spitalkirche was decent and the Hard Rock Cafe was a must see too. Near the beginning of the long street that became Leopoldstrasse later, you can see the Marie-Theresien Statue and the Triumphpforte. The Marie-Theresien Statue makes a great photo with the Alps in the background. The Triumphpforte reminds me of the Arc de Triomph, as I'm sure its supposed to. As we neared the Church Bell Museum, we spotted the Bergisel Ski Jump/Panorama at the end of the street, waaay up above. I think during the winter you can take a lift up, then do the ski jump back down the other side. During the non-winter months I think you walk up there for some great views. After yesterday's looong climb, we passed to going up.
The Glockengiesserei, or church bell museum, and foundry is an awesome place to visit, in my opinion. Manoli didn't
care to go on the tour, so they let her wait out in the garden. Besides a good number of bells from hundreds of years ago and numerous places, they also had a lot of tools and mock-ups of how church bells are made. They made them in China something like 3000 years ago, but weren't made elsewhere until the 1500s. The real gem of this museum/tour was seeing an actual foundry, with work in progress. I imagine on the right day and time, you can observer the people actually making a bell, but seeing the place, after seeing videos and mock-ups was still pretty cool. I'd love to describe the process, but it would take a lot of words and probably be boring to most people. If you think you'd like to know, check out the internet, I'm sure they have some good videos and explanations. The only down side to the museum/tour was the fact that they didn't have any thimbles! I would think they could make a metal, bell-shaped thimble easily enough. Oh well, I ended up buying one depicting the Goldenes Dach, or Golden Roof instead.
Before heading back towards the hostel, we checked out
the near by Basilika Wilten and Stift Wilden, a pretty cool church and nearby abbey. When we got close to the old center of town, I remembered reading about a cool tower you can climb up and get some great views of Innsbruck. We finally found it, the Stadtturm, paid our 4 Euros each (it was supposed to be only 3 Euros for Seniors, but stupid me just assumed they'd know we were 60 and over), and climbed the 137 stairs up the spiral staircase. Whew.... what a climb! The views from the top were quite impressive though. After we climbed back down, we decided it was time for lunch, so after wandering around quite a bit, trying to find a place that served Austrian food at a reasonable price, we finally settled on the Stiftskeller. It's amazing how many Italian, Chinese, and Pizza places there are in town, and there were a lot of them in most of Germany too. Anyways, after reviewing the menu, in English, Manoli settled on a salad, and I ordered a dish that had 3 types of dumplings; cheese, spinach, and onion. Quite good, but VERY filling.
After lunch we returned to the
hostel for our afternoon rest time, then went out later looking for something light in one of the many supermarkets. We ended up in one called MPREIS. There were a lot of Eurospars, but we'd already checked one of them out. MPREIS did have a different selection that Eurospar. We ended up getting an assortment of sandwich meat, an interesting looking cheese, some grapes, a package of two mini-creampuffs with chocolate sauce, and a mango lassie. Everything was delicious, and more than enough to eat.
Tomorrow we leave Austria and head to Liechtenstein where we'll be staying at the Schaan-Vaduz Youth Hostel in the capital city of Schaan-Vaduz for just one night. We hope we can see enough tomorrow before checking in at 5pm. If not, we can spend a little time the next day before heading to our last stop in Zurich, Switzerland.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.405s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 16; qc: 61; dbt: 0.1856s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb