Our main goal was to do some skiing and a little bit of sight seeing. We headed out on the 23rd and began the drive north to Austria. There isn't an interstate (autostrada/autobahn) that goes directly to Innsbruck from our area so we were on smaller roads the whole journey north until about 30 minutes outside the city. This made for a GORGEOUS drive through the Italian Alps and into the Austrian Alps. We drove through the Italian town of Cortina which held the Olympics in 1956. We drove right past the Olympic ski jump. As you're driving up the mountain there are ski lifts going over the roads, gondolas going up the mountain, and we literally drove through the parking lot of a ski slope as we were on the road. There was a TON of snow and it made for a beautiful drive.
The GPS calculated, four hour drive turned into a 5 hour drive due to small 1-2 lane, snow covered roads through the mountains. The drive home proved to be a bit longer due to even MORE snow, a lack of windshield wiper fluid, closed gas stations, and a few wrong turns...but hey...that's travel, right?
Anyway, on to the trip, we were very impressed with Innsbruck. It was such a neat city with gorgeous views, beautiful buildings, and Christmas decorated streets! My pictures are a bit out of order, as usual, but here goes.
Pictures of the city with the Alps in the background...
The south end of Innsbruck´s main artery, Maria-Theresien Street, is spanned by a Triumphal Arch, modeled after those in Rome. Empress Maria Theresa ordered it built in 1765 with a twofold purpose: To honor the marriage of her son, the Duke of Tuscany, later Emperor Leopold II, to Maria Ludovica from Spain, and to mourn the death of her beloved husband, Francis I Stephen of Lothringen, who died during the celebrations. The marble friezes were created by Balthasar Moll in 1744. One side of the Arch symbolizes the joyful aspect of the event, the other side the sadness.Anyway...I'm not sure how to get my margins back to normal or the colors apparently. Look, I try to be all fancy and do a "block quote" and I screw up all the formatting!! Oh well, but the arch was just another beautiful aspect of this cool city. Needless to say we were very impressed with the city and it was a great way to spend Christmas. It actually hardly felt like Christmas because we were skiing all day. It helped staying busy all day because I wasn't sitting at home sad I wasn't with family! I did bring our new Night Before Christmas book that my parents sent us to read on Christmas Eve. It is a long standing tradition in my family for my dad to read The Night Before Christmas to us before we go to bed on Christmas Eve. So Taylor read it to me in the hotel on Christmas Eve. He's going to kill me for posting this...but I was very happy to have a little sense of home :)
Anyway, besides a few bruises on my legs we both survived our trip! Today has been a hugely lazy day...in fact it's almost 10pm and I never even changed out of my pajamas...that's my kind of day!!! Taylor has one more day off and then he goes into crazy work mode over New Years. He had Christmas off, so he'll be working a week straight over New Years.
It takes awhile to upload pictures to the blog and if I add too many it would make the post EVEN longer than it already is, but I made an album on Facebook from the trip where I picked out the highlights...I am posting a link to the album. You don't have to have a Facebook account to view the pictures, you should just be able to click on it and see the album. So if you choose, ENJOY! There are a few of our drive home and of the Olympic ski jump as well as a few others from the trip!
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2403781&id=9402569&l=fc848766bc
Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and Hanukkah (that's for you Jason!!) And have a safe New Years!