Innsbruck
June 19 Sunday
An easy ten minute train ride from Hall put us in Innsbruck, a beautiful town with roots back to the Stone Age, that serves as capital for Austrian Tyrol. The surrounding Alps are breathtaking and we arrive on a beautiful blue sky day.
After a brief walk around Old Town center and a look at the Golden Roof (viewing box built in 1500 for Emperor Maximilian I), we followed the sound of beautiful church bells until we found the origin.
With that Bee was off to church and Cee and I were left on our own to explore for an hour. I should mention that the Golden Roof was actually made of 3000 copper tiles and not gold. Another example of “all that glitters is not gold.”
Innsbruck was Europe's center for culture and politics from the 15th to the 18th centuries, and the Old City reflects sophistication in its beautiful architecture, large central square, fountains, and statues. Cee & I meandered the streets, crossed the oldest bridge which was built in the 11th century, and explored various shops. When we finally reunited with Bee, our prize had been the Schnapps sampling store. This cute little store was noteworthy for having perhaps 100's of different flavors of schnapps, bottled in what appeared to be over sized hamster water feeders (you know, the egg shaped glass bottle, with a spout sticking out near the bottom). It was hard to choose which ones we wanted to sample. Do we choose by color? Clarity? Name? As I choose my race horses based on color, I decided to go with this approach in schnapps tasting. Yummy. Mouth under spout, turn the spigot & enjoy the liquid flow. Well, not exactly. The friendly store keeper had her own ideas, including small plastic sampling cups, reminiscent of the small containers used in hospitals when dispensing pills to patients. At any rate we sampled several each and finally decided on a lemon flavored schnapps, something similar to Baileys Cream, and absinthe..
With more than a few swallows to fortify us we were off to Lake Bled in Slovenia.
As an applause: the schnapps tasting occured at 10am (local time) on a Sunday as Bee was attending Mass. *standing ovation* for one Miss Gigi... :D Yeah for cool Gma's!
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