Jumping About In Innsbruck

Life is definitely speeding up

Goldenes Dachl is now a museum of everything about Emperor Maximillian I.  We didn’t go in, but we rather liked the front porch; thought about putting one like it on the front of our house though it might be a little ostentatious in Naremburn….

 

We each purchased an ‘Innsbruck card’ and decided to really use them; get value for money and wear out our feet, which we certainly did.  Innsbruck city touring in two days and here are the photos………

The Hofkirche.  Kaiser Maximillian I fancied having forty statues of his family and famous people standing around his tomb, sadly only twenty-eight were completed, but there was something captivating about them.

 

From a balcony inside the Hofkirche you can look down onto the bronze statues and the tomb. Bizarrely the tomb itself was completed, which is okay because he’s not in there.  His body is actually buried in the castle chapel in Wiener Neustadt. Seems like rather a waste of money, even for a Holy Roman Emperor, though he probably had a large pot of cash available to spend.

 

2^nd stop: the Tiroler Volkskunstmuseum full of all sorts of fascinating things pertaining to the Tyrol.  There were whole rooms reconstructed from very old houses, tiny nativity sets, clothing, folk art and furniture.  All very lovely, but “no photos please”.

 

Next stop, Kaiserliche Hofburg, the Imperial Palace in Innsbruck.  There were twenty-five lovely 18^th and 19th C rooms to dawdle through and the Riesensaal, or Giant’s Hall, was quite spectacular.  Dotted around the room were mirrors on hinges that you could look down into and study the ceiling above; a very courteous way to prevent causing neck-ache for all the visitors passing through these days.

 

Tirol Geniessen was a pretty shop selling an array of lovely glass bottles and all sorts of colourful schnapps and liquor to be poured into them. Yes, I bought a 200ml heart shaped bottle and had it filled with dark chocolate liquor.  I hope it tastes as good as it looks.

 

Grassmayr Glockenmuseum and Glockengiesserei, was a fascinating place that opened our eyes to bells and the work involved in making them.  The company was set up 400 years ago and has stayed in the same family through fourteen generations.  I’m glad I wasn’t a member of that family because when we looked into the new foundry, it looked like really hard, hot, dusty, work.  In the old original foundry, there were a variety of bells you could play with, which of course we did, and the sounds were fantastic.  The hum and vibration on some of the larger ones continued for ages and it was mesmerizing being able to put your hands on them to ‘feel the sounds’.

 

We jumped on the ‘Hop On Hop Off Bus’, (included in the Innsbruck Card) and jumped off at the Bergisel Sprungstadion, a fifty-metre high ski jump tower designed by Dame Zaha Hadid in 2002.  We were drifting around taking photos of the arena and tower, when I suddenly let out a little yelp of joy.  A ski jumper, and I don’t mean the woolly sort, landed on the slope behind Rodney!!!  It was a practice day and I really couldn’t believe my eyes; in fact I got a bit emotional.

 

My Dad always loved watching the ski-jumping competitions shown on telly, having spent some of his childhood near the Homenkollbakken ski-jump in Oslo. I remember watching the events with him when I was young and here I was actually seeing it for real.  There was of course no snow, just an engineered brush surface with water being hosed down it and we weren’t in Norway, but it was incredible to watch.  And we watched, from every angle; below from the stadium, above the track and high above in the restaurant at the top of the tower.  I loved it and I wish I could have had the chance to shake the hands of just one of those crazy, but oh so brave, athletes.

 

 

The ‘Hop On Hop Off Bus’ took us to the train station to catch a bus back to the campsite.  Unfortunately, the rain had started by now and the last two buses, in the early evening, terminate in Natterersee village.  Our bus was delayed with heavy traffic in town and by the time we got to the village we had missed the connecting bus and had to wait another half an hour for the next one, dang!  But after drying out and waking up to a sunny morning we jumped on the 9:20am first bus back into Innsbruck and off we went again.

There are some lovely buildings around Innsbruck and I love the painting on some of the exterior walls; houses nowadays are so boring in comparison.  We popped in to Swarovski, not a shop I normally browse in, but this area is where Swarovski started, in fact there’s a huge museum outside town, in Wattens, where the crystal jewellery and high end optics are still made, but we decided to spend more time in Innsbruck and Rodney’s not really too interested in jewellery…..

We strolled through the Hofgarten, Imperial Gardens, and out the other side to catch a ‘Hop On Hop Off Bus’ through the city and out to Schloss Ambras.  It’s a magnificent 16thC castle, set low in the hills above Innsbruck and claims to be the world’s oldest museum.  We sat in the garden and enjoyed a bowl of soup surrounded by rather bright blue sheep, that’s another first…..

 

There were some weird and wonderfully curious items on display inside one of the rooms, plus rooms full of armour and weapons, a portrait gallery and a display of modern glass.  We didn’t have long to linger here so we concentrated on the weird and wonderful and wondered what sort of man Archduke Ferdinand II was, to collect such strange things….  I particularly like the painting of the hairy man.  The Spanish Hall is one of the main attractions and it really is rather lovely, though some of the paintings on the wall did give me the giggles.

 

 

A quick dash down one hill and then up another, got us to the tram station just in time to catch a tram up to Igls.  It was a nice stroll right through the village to the very far end to catch the Patscherkofelbahn, cable car, which sailed over the golf course, then over the Olympic bobsleigh and luge track, up to the top of the ridge below Patscherkofel mountain.

The views from the top were fabulous; we couldn’t quite spot Eileen, but we could see the campsite and everything in between.  We only went for a short stroll as we could see the rain clouds forming and heading towards Innsbruck below.  The last direct bus back at 5pm was foremost in our minds and neither of us wanted to get caught in the rain again.  We did get down quicker than expected, so had time to pop into the Taxispalais gallery which has nothing to do with taxis and the exhibition of photos and paintings of human bodies was really more weird than inspiring.  As they say, not all art is to everyone’s taste.

We did make time for a creamy hot chocolate in the café at the top of the Patscherkofelbahn…….