It's taking me longer to get to my travel posts these days. I hadn't finished editing all of my photos from year 2022 and when I got busy with work I pretty much stopped altogether. I have used up all of the completed ones and now I'm just picking away at the rest and editing as I go. The process of editing takes a long time but I take pride in my blog and my posts and feel like I can't not do it at this point. It takes longer but it's worth it to me. But anyway, that is enough preamble for now. Let's get back to my travels.
I left off discussing a family trip to Austria and working our way to the city of Innsbruck from Salzburg. Along the route we had stopped at Eben am Achensee and Hall in Tirol which I already discussed.
We made it to Innsbruck in the late afternoon and had a hell of of time trying to figure out where to park at our hotel. We chose a hotel right in the heart of the old town and understandably, there were a lot of no drive zones in that part of the city including to get to our accommodations.
On top of that, many of the streets along our route were closed off for construction so our GPS was severly struggling to find a pathway to our destination. Eventually my father in law and I had to get out of the car and walk to the hotel to ask where we were supposed to park, while my wife and her mom continued to circle around with the car. The lot ended up being really far away actually, maybe a 10 minute walk or so. It seemed longer because of our luggage I think. The exercise from the walk might have helped relieve some of the built up stress from the chaotic drive though, so maybe it was a good thing really?
Eventually we made it to the hotel and were given a welcome drink by the host there. The drinks also helped calm the nerves a little so that was nice.
This hotel was located directly in the old town. The photo above was taken from a window inside where we had our drinks in the lobby bar area. It was great being in the historic district and so close to the spot that we would spend a lot of our time in, but of course the old historic buildings in any old town tend to be quite small.
Here is a look at our hotel room. It was decent overall but probably our least favorite that we stayed in during the trip. The wide angle lens of my camera makes it look okay in size but it was actually very cramped in there and had an awkward layout in places. I had to take a mental note of an overhead shelf and bench that was just out of the frame of my photo. It was like - "Note to self, do not trip over bench and bash your head on shelf at night if you need to go to the bathroom. Try to remember to step around it." I think that I hit my shin on it at least once over the two nights that we stayed there. The bathroom was also very cramped inside. Everything was fine of course, it just happened to be our least favorite of the hotels that we stayed in during the trip. There was a strange clown theme happening in there as well which I didn't take a picture of but may also have been part of the uneasy vibe inside. I'm not afraid of clowns like I know many people are but as my wife would say "they do not spark joy" in me either.
For dinner we did a low key traditional comfort food dinner in a very homey feeling restaurant. My father in law had Schnitzel again and was back to being happy after his regretful mistake of not ordering it at the Michelin Star restaurant we went to the night before 馃檭. He still says that his only regret of the trip was ordering the tasting menu at the Michelin Star restaurant and not the schnitzel. "I let my guard down that day" he will say periodically when we talk about the vacation lol.
The staircase of the restaurant was covered in trophy mounts and all I could think about was the scene in the 1995 movie sequel "Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls" when he enters the room with all the trophy mounts on the walls and says "This is a lovely room of death."
No judgement from me here, that's just what came to mind ehen I saw it, and it made me laugh quietly to myself.
For dessert we had this very traditional dish. I believe that it's called Kaiserschmarrn but someone correct me in the comments if I'm wrong. It's essentially scrambled pancakes, with blueberries in it in our case.
It was served in a cast iron pot with ice cream on the side and was a massive portion meant for two. My wife and I shared it but even between the two of us it was too much for us to finish. I'm not huge on pancakes in general but this was decent enough. We had a pretty low key evening on the day of our arrival but toured the town a lot more the following day. I'll get to that next time.