Innsbruck has had inhabitants since the Stone Age so its quite an old, established bit of a land. It's more famous as a ski resort, like Aspen, CO in the US. On New Years Day, our friend Tom decided to take us over to the city because he had some errands to run and insisted we have a walk around to see the place. He dropped us off at the edge of the old city and off we went. The first street we walked down was Hofgasse. The buildings all look to be of a modern era but nothing 20th century. They all had large doll figures hanging off of the front façades. Above is a picture of the famous Golden Roof. The building was built in 1500 and the roof was gold tiled for the emperor Maximilian I. He watched many tournaments in the plaza below.
We wandered down to the river to take in the view and get some good photos of ourselves with the scenery. Here we met up with our friend Tom and walked around a bit. He took us up the Watch Tower to get a 360 degree view of the city and the surrounding mountains. The air was fresh and clean and cold.
From the watch tower, we headed to the cathedral north of the old town. The façade out front is plain and simple and inside there is a red tint to most of the concrete blocks. The church had tons of ornate paintings and there was a steady stream of tourists coming in and out.
We had lunch at a local stand on the main square. It served different kinds of sausages with mustard and ketchup and we found another stand with shredded potatoes and different kinds of sauces. The food was delicious and filling. We walked through some more major plazas on our way to the car. We passed through a lot of Christmas markets that were closing down for the season. It was a great way to spend our first day of 2011. That night we had dinner at our friend's house, some home cooking from our friend's mom. Unfortunately, we had to catch the night bus to the train station because the train tickets we were sold were for a train to southeast Austria, where we would catch a bus to Venice. As we waited at the train station, some drunk kid mistook our killing time by looking at pictures as wanting him to come over and talk to us. We endured his drunken rant for a few minutes then pretended that our train was about to arrive and ran off.
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