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Published: June 21st 2013
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The golden roof
Looking from the City Tower Today will be our last whole day in Austria. After being warned about the coming cooler and wet weather we decided to spend the day in the city and take in as many sights as we could. As it has turned out, the weather has remained fine but a few degrees cooler than yesterday.
It is very convenient having the hotel in the inner city as everything is just a short walk away. Firstly we walked down near the golden roof to the The City Tower and up 148 steps to the top. It has a 360 walk around tower under the clock so gives a magnificent view out over the roofs of the Old Town. It looks directly down over the golden roof building and the Hofburg Palace so well worth the climb up.
We then went to the building with the golden roof and did the tour there. It is small but full of information mainly about the architecture of the town, the history of the Hapsburg/Austrian Empire, and the Kaiser Maximillian. It was surprising to see the size of the Empire and that it stretched to the east almost to Turkey (not without trying to take
The Triumph Arch
Looking through the Arch to the Olympic Ski Jump in the distance. Our hotel was adjacent to this. them over), south to Italy and Spain and north covering Germany. They were seen to be rulers of the Roman Empire back in the 1400's. It was amazing to see how far their influence was over the entire European area. That has certainly disappeared today. However, it does account for the magnificence of the palaces, castles and churches in Austria that we've been seeing.
We wanted to escape the hoards of tourists so found a place along the Inn River where we could get a salad.
After walking back to the Congress Hall we got the Sightseeing Bus (covered by the Innsbruck Card) and did the tour of the city. As well as driving around the Zentrum that we had already seen, we headed out past the Bahnhof (Railway Stn) and up into the hills to the Ambras Palace that houses the armoury, the English Garden and Art Gallery. We didn't stop to do the visit.
On the way back to the city area we passed the well known Ski Jump that can be seen all over the city and the stadiums used for the 2000 Winter Olympics. We remembered the Ski Jump from our 1976 visit
and believe it has been rebuilt and there is also a funicular up the side of it.
On arriving back at the Congress Hall we had a typical icecream - a cone with the various flavours scraped into and around the cone (not our rolled scoops).
Innsbruck is a great place to shop. The shops are very modern, there are many choices and not the same prevalence of chain stores, although they are there. It's good to see how they have merged the modern into the old architecture without it looking too out of place. The facades have been left and the modern built either behind or under the old. We went back to the sport shop we saw yesterday and I had a 3rd purchase of European tramping boots over the years. This time I changed to the Scarpa brand so we'll see how they go. They are not cheap, but cheaper than buying in NZ. Linds bought a shirt - $20 in a sale.
So, back to packing up for an earlier start in the morning and eating out for dinner tonight.
Austria has been a very good experience. It is more relaxed than Switzerland and people more casual and we would return again.
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