What a phenomenal day. We are loving Innsbruck. The setting for this city is amazing. This blog entry will be mostly pictures, because they will tell the story.
We started the day with a great breakfast, followed by a trip to the book store and some serious route planning. As I mentioned before, we seem to have planned a three month tour, with only two months in which to accomplish it. Oops. This problem has been exacerbated by the fact that we have LOVED Austria, and have really taken our time here. We haven't exactly taken the most direct route to Innsbruck, and have enjoyed every kilometre of our meandering journey.
So, this morning was decision time, and it came down to this. If we go to Italy, we will be faced with a long train ride from somewhere in Italy to get back to Frankfurt in time to catch our flight on the 26th. Even if we don't go to Italy we are probably looking at a train from somewhere. We have made the decision to take the Isar Radweg north to Bad Tolz, and then go east towards the Bodensee and then north to Freiberg to see those babies. We will be taking pictures of them for sure! This is pretty much all new territory for us, with the exception of the north side of the Bodensee, which we love...or maybe we will take the south shore, and then it will all be new...but we love the north shore...do you see how hard this is? Oh, I love bike touring, and I love flexibility, and we are both happy with our decision. So we are excited.
Once all that decision making was done we walked through the old town and then took the funicular and the gondola to the top of the Nordkette Recreational Area. What a day. Here is where the pictures will take over.
Hmmmm. How is Keith going to make this decision? Multiple types of strudel. Possibly a more difficult decision than which way to bicycle from Innsbruck.
We stopped for apple strudel to fortify ourselves. Keith tried to feed this guy some from his hand, but he was too shy. We liked the bright yellow beak.
So we met these four terrific young people. They were great to talk to, and we voted them best dressed at the summit. They are in Innsbruck on a Mormon mission.
I loved these jackets. These kids were happy to zip up for us so we could show you in a picture. They are hood and goggles all in one, and were really quite something.
I dragged Keith into the Swarovski Crystal store. We passed the manufacturing center on our bikes coming into town. I made him take a picture of it, and he had no idea what Swarovski Crystal was. Well, he does now! The store was seriously huge and very flash. It was lots of fun to look. You can book tours of the manufacturing plant from Innsbruck.
Then it was a bit more wandering around town, back to the room for a rest and some wine, and we just came in from dinner at a great little Vietnamese place around the corner. We had Pho, and I was in heaven. The best news of all? My birthday present is one more day in Innsbruck. Yahoo! What a great place to celebrate.
