Getting to Innsbruck

In our case we flew from Chicago to Munich, Germany on Lufthansa Airlines. There we were met by a bus which was to take us to Innsbruck. We were told it was going to be a 2.5 hour drive but took longer due to traffic in Munich as well as apparently taking the scenic route to drop off some people at a small town along the way. At this point we had already spent over 8 hours on a plane so we were quite anxious to get to our hotel and start our vacation. This was the beginning of our lesson to make the most of the time spent on buses and just relax.

Once we got near Innsbruck the scenery got our blood pumping although we were all a bit concerned about how only the very tops of the mountains had any significant snow.

The hotel we stayed at was the Hotel Grauer Bär (means Gray Bear) located near the old town section Innsbruck. There were tons of restaurants and shops around as well as one of the stops for the ski buses was right around the corner. The hotel itself was a 4* hotel that cost only slightly more than the usual 3* hotels. We've been to Europe before and have had some bad luck with hotels with less than 4*s. We were not disappointed here. The hotel was older but was in good shape and looked recently renovated. The rooms where small but comfortable. The bathrooms had heated tiles in most rooms and the upper floors had balconies with nice views of the town and surrounding mountains.

The best part was the restaurant. The breakfast includes coffee, a choice of cold and hot cereals, various breads, meats like prosciutto, spreads and usually hot scrambled eggs with ham and/or bacon. It was good but got a little repetitive by the end of the week. Dinner at the restaurant was quite excellent. The food choices were limited to three entrees per night including one vegetarian selection. We didn't care, whatever you selected it was great. There was also a first course of either soup or cold meats as well as a decent desert. Strangely coffee was not served after dinner.

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Around Innsbruck

We didn't spend that much time hanging around Innsbruck itself using it mostly as a centrally located home base. We were usually on a day trip to a different town or out at Stubai Glacier snowboarding. There were a couple sights there. In the center of the main square in the Old Town is the Goldenes Dachl (Golden Roof) built by Fiedl the Penniless. It's said he did that to show he wasn't as poor as everyone thought. In the same square is the blue and white Helbling House which had it's elaborate rococo decoration added in 1730. Also there is the Domkirche zu St. Jakob, a cathedral with some famous paintings. Down the street is the Trimphpforte, or Triumphal Arch, built to commemorate some historical events.

The food in general is very good and about the same price as in the USA. We found restaurants serving many cuisines including Thai, Indian, Middle Eastern, Italian and many others. The only thing that bugged us was that the food was often quite salty. At one Austrian restaurant several members of our group found the food salty to the point of being inedible. Other places also had some very salty selections such as the soups at the Stubai cafeteria and the Pad Thai at a Thai restaurant. The rest of the food seemed to be relatively salt free. The food in the Grauer Bar restaurant was usually not overly salty either.

Bier (Beer) is plentiful and cheap. You can usually get a beer for just a few cents more than a soda and the beer will be twice the size. Beer was even available from the bus driver on the trips from the Glacier.

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