Innsbruck

We made it to Innsbruck last night and took a walk around Old Town after checking into our pension (a pension is like a cross between a hostel and a hotel). Innsbruck is really beautiful, surrounded on all sides by mountains rising up thousands of feet and with a really big swift river flowing through it.

We met a couple of other Americans at our hostel last night who recommended a free hiking guided tour run by the Innsbruck Alpine Academy. We got up bright and early and met our guide at 9 am. We were then shuttled about an hour outside Innsbruck up to a really great mountainy area (we will put pictures later - no USB port on this computer). We thought this was going to be a short, easy hike, but we were wrong!!! First of all, our guide made us take off our sneakers and he lent us some hiking boots. Then, we began climbing... and climbing... over 2000 feet up to the top of this freezing cold mountain, almost to a glacier! We were surprising to find a little restaurant-hotel up there (only accesible by foot), but they are very common in Austria. We warmed up inside and had lunch (and Carrie had 2 hot chocolates), then began our descent, during which we saw lots more mountains and some Austrian wildlife (cows). The hike took the entire day, about 10 to 4 and roughly 8 miles.

Now we are tired and hungry but we had to stop by the laundromat to clean our stinky laundry.

Innsbruck was so much fun that we decided to stay another night! Tomorrow we are hoping (weather permitting) to ride a cable car up to the top of a glacier and do some hiking up there. After that we are leaving for Bolzano.

Carrie and Jim