I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas...

Most of you know, but Taylor and I spent our first Christmas together in Innsbruck, Austria. Taylor did quite a bit of research into the area and looked up ski slopes and things to do in the city, but really when it comes down to it, there's only so much research you can do and then you jump in blind and hope for the best! ITT (Information, Tickets, and Travel) on base helped us book a hotel, I bought a map, we plugged the address into the GPS, and off we went!

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...

This is in the streets, you can see all the little booths set up. This was the Christkindl Markt 2009. The booths were all lit up and sold little trinkets, food, wine, spiced drinks, etc. If you click on the picture to enlarge it you will notice the buildings are exquisitely painted with all kinds of designs, they were beautiful!!

Another picture of the city...

This is in the square of the city. They had the big Christmas tree lit up (there are pictures below of this). And those are the Alps in the background with the clouds starting to overtake them...the sky was so bright and vivid against the white of the snow. If you notice the balcony behind the tree...it has a golden roof. It is one of the most famous sights in Innsbruck. It was built in the 1500s by Archduke Friedrich IV for his emperor to sit on and watch his subordinates below in the square. When we got there the night of the 23rd the balcony had a brass group playing Christmas carols...it was beautiful!

This is at the top of the mountain at the Axamer Lizum resort we went to on the 24th. http://www.axamer-lizum.at/winter/index.htm The views were BEAUTIFUL!!! The slopes were tough...it was no North Carolina, Sugar Mountain that's for sure!!! The blue (easiest) slopes were tough for me!!! Taylor is a better skiier than me and he handled them a lot better, but they wore him out as well! Our first day, they closed the tram up the mountain at Axamer Lizum because of high winds at the top of the mountain, so we had to wait for about 2 hours in the morning before they opened back up. Luckily they did open up and we got to ski the rest of the afternoon. We weren't overly impressed with the skiing at those slopes, it just wasn't quite what we expected for skiing in the Alps. The runs were very long, but there weren't a lot of options, the place just wasn't that big. There were a lot of runs closed because of the winds, but it still felt small! All of the following mountain pictures were taken from Axamer Lizum because the day was beautiful and the views were perfect.

This got stuck in there out of order...I attempted to get a few pictures of us together. When we're traveling with just the two of us, it's tough to get pictures. Taylor doesn't like to ask people to take pictures. For one, he doesn't like to interrupt. And for two, he doesn't like handing over his fancy camera to a stranger (understandable).

And back to the slopes. Funny story here. This picture is from Christmas afternoon, about 4:15 or so. On Christmas day we went to a different slope, Stubaital Gletscher ( http://www.stubaier-gletscher.com/en/winter/ ). We loved these slopes and they were more how we pictured "skiing in the Alps". The only down side was the lack of visibility! It snowed ALL day long and the mountain was so high it was in a cloud and it was SO SO difficult to see. You literally could hardly see in front of you, and it was so tough to see where the snow was piled up, where there were bumps, etc which was made it very difficult. But we really liked the place and it was a good size. When we arrived there in the morning, there was no snow in the parking lot, it was raining there when pulled up. Once we took the gondola up the mountain the rain had turned to snow. It did not even occur to us that it might start snowing at the bottom of the mountain. So when we arrived at our car we had QUITE a surprise!

It had snowed about a foot and a half while we were skiing that day. It was GREAT for skiing up on the mountain, but my poor Accord...she's just not used to this crazy weather! I was digging out a path in the snow to make it out of the parking lot. We had wheels spinning, we were pushing the car, and digging out the wheels, but we finally made it out of the parking lot. It was looking like it could be a long Christmas night!

This is back from the 24th and Axamer...proof that we were both there...and together :)

How GORGEOUS. It just takes my breath away.

Taylor calls me corny for pointing out things like this, but I swear when we were up on the mountain there was a hut there playing music and at one point it was playing Amazing Grace. How crazy? We are up on top of the Alps and hearing Amazing Grace being played...is this for real!?!?! I mean at other times the hut was playing Boyz 2 Men and Seal's "Kissed By a Rose"...but still :)

This was at the Christkindl Markt. We stopped at one of the booths so I could try some of the hot cider. Well it wasn't actually hot cider, I'm not sure what the name was, but it was red wine, orange juice, rum, and spices...delicious!

One of the bell towers lit up at night.

We found Santa shopping on the 23rd. This was on the streets in Innsbruck.

The alleys/streets all decorated for Christmas. They all had lights hung and Christmas trees all over. It was like a Christmas village!!

Here is the tree lit up with the Golden Roof lit up as well. Beautiful :)

This is the Triumphal Arch that was located directly in front of our hotel. Our hotel was on the right, just before the arch. Here is a bit of history on the arch, I looked it up online.

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!