Innsbruck day trip...

As soon as we got back from Spring Break on Sunday, we had a day trip to Innsbruck that Friday. Lucky us right! We left at 6:30 in the morning and stopped at Swarovski Crystal factory/museum/store about 20 minutes away from Innsbruck. The museum really didn't make any sense at all - it was like 25 rooms of random art and stuff....anyways.




The mouth of the entrance to the museum

We also stopped at this other place to see the Olympic ski jump and a little castle and gardens. It was a really nice break and beautiful as well!





An overhead view of Innsbruck - a very nice place settled in the Alps. Too bad that day that we went was all foggy because I would have really liked to see what they looked like all around the city. But it seems as if on every trip we take there is rain or its extremely cloudy. I think that is just how Europe is really...


A peacock at the castle!




Schloss Ambros



The olympic stadium. It's also going to be one of the sites for the Euro 2008 soccer tournament. Austria and Switzerland are hosting it this year.

The Ski JUMP!

A picture of us in town

Another picture of Innsbruck

Our group then just took a tour of the city with Andreas and got to walk around all day after that. We really only had time to go to one museum so we choose to go to the Bell Museum. It was kind of far away, but we just took our time, got a sandwich and meandered over there.

The many colorful buildings of the city

The Golden Roof in the middle of the old city

And here is the bell museum...its been making bells since 1599 as you can see.

Inside the factory. I was sad that they weren't working on it, but at least we got to see what it looked like.
Some of their bells that they have made

Me in front of the sign

Their bells that they make are all made out of bronze which actually is not that common. They had examples of different bells made out of different materials that you could ring and see how they sounded. The bronze one echoes a lot longer than the others and I really thought that it had a fuller sound. It's much more expensive this way, but the quality is also better. This company also made the 2nd largest bell in the world and its hanging in the Alps.

We needed a little something sweet after all that, so found a nice little pastry shop and got a pastry! Trying different Austrian pastries is a must!

I'm obviously very excited.

Overall it was just a day trip, but I think that it was the right amount of time as well. It reminded me a lot of Salzburg, but just more mountainous.