Austria weekend

This last weekend was spent in Innsbruck, Austria. It was so beautiful and snowy! I loved it there. On Thursday we left in the middle of the afternoon, and had about a 6.5 hour bus ride to our youth hostel. On the way we watched two movies; Inside Man and Children of Men. Both were pretty good; Children of Men was pretty freaky! We stopped along the way to get some dinner at a rest stop, and by the time I got to the hostel I was pretty exhausted and decided to take it easy for the rest of the evening.

The next morning I got up and got ready and had a quick Breakfast downstairs at the hostel. I had a roll with cheese and some cereal. It was pretty good! And then all of us that were going to the mountain loaded onto the buses around 8:30 AM and from there we took off to the ski rental place. I was in the first group who signed up for rental equipment, so I was one of the first people that got my stuff. I rented basic boots, skis, and poles for originally two days.




After I got my equipment, Cierra and I decided to go to a little bakery that was close by to the rental equipment shop. I got one of the best chocolate croissants I have ever eaten, and a ham, cheese, and tomato sandwich. As soon as everyone got their equipment, it was about 45 minutes from the shop. Once we got to the mountains, I was so excited to go on my first run! The snow was pretty good in parts- but also pretty icy in others. Overall the ski conditions were good because it wasn't snowing and it wasn't too windy at all. The only bummer thing was that my boots ended up being way too tight and I didn't realize it at the shop and I ended up getting pretty bad bruises on my shins just hours after I got there. For that reason, I kinda took it easy for the second half of the afternoon. Some friends and I hung out at the ski lodge and got a beer and played apples to apples. I had never played before, but it was super fun! I ended up winning :) After skiing, I was super tired and I ended up just going out to dinner with Cierra, and a bunch of the people that she skied with for the day. We went to this local restaurant near our hostel and I decided to branch out and get a dish that I would normally not get... it was chopped dumplings with grilled eggs and garlic and other veggies. It was yummy! It had a lot of good flavor- and it kind of reminded me of a Breakfast burrito haha.

Because I was pretty tired and my shins were in no condition for skiing the next day, I decided to take it easy the second day and Emma and I went on a little adventure and found the famous Ambras castle. It took us awhile to get there; we had to first go on a bus, and then transfer on a train and then the hostel receptionist said it was a short 2 minute walk from the train stop... but we had no idea which direction to go because we didn't have a clear map so we kind of just wandered around for awhile, and got directions from another hotel. We finally made it and it was worth it! The castle wasn't what I was expecting, but Ferdinand made it way back in the day and it was pretty medieval. In the castle there were lots of old medieval warfare things, as well as antlers, a blow fish (in the arts and curiosities section), and lots of paintings. Overall it was a good experience. We had a nice lunch at the castle's restaurant. We got the typical dish of Weinersnitzel (sp for sure) and it was delicious.

Emma and I had quite the adventure trying to get back to our hostel; it closes from 1-5 so we made an unsuccessful attempt of trying to get into it around 1:30. From there, we went back into what we thought was "town" but we weren't sure... I think it ended up just being a random residential stop we got off of, but we asked where a cafe was and we got some deserts to split and some hot chocolate that was to die for! It was then that I looked into my purse and realized that the key for the hotel had two keys; I thought maybe was one for the hostel when it was on "off hours?" so we took the bus back and made another unsuccessful attempt of trying to get into the hostel. I even climbed over a fence to try to stick my key in some of the doors... haha I felt like such a dork. But anyways, just before we were about to give up again, we saw that the baggage door was open (this had a lot of our snow equipment) and then we found a keypad where we could enter in the code for the day. We knew there was a place to enter in a code to get in, but the first time around, we couldn't find it! They never told us where it was... haha. So after a few attempts I managed to open the door and we were very happy. Both of us were pretty sick with a cold (I woke up that morning with a lot of congestion and a sore throat and head ache :( ) so we were glad we could relax and hang out until the rest of the group came back. The Gonzaga group either went skiing for the day or they went to the men's downhill skiing race. I really wanted to go to that too, but we would've been outside for 5 hours and I had a pretty bad cold so I thought it would be better to do something low key. I definitely don't regret it, but the people that went said it was a lot of fun! Well, the rest of the afternoon was spent watching 27 dresses, even though I fell asleep half way through it. After it was over, I took another small nap, talked to Chris on the phone, and then got ready for dinner.

Yesterday's dinner was one of my favorite memories of the weekend; Peter (one of the travel coordinators) is from Innsbruck, so he hooked us up with a great restaurant and local German dancers/singers. They were amazing! They did a lot of cool stunts and had great beat and rhythm. I was very impressed. For dinner we had a pancake strip soup (sounds strange but it was very good), Weinersnitzel again, and an apple strudel for desert. I actually ended up liking the Weinersnitzel I had at lunch better, but it was still great!

Well that pretty much concludes my memories of Austria- this morning we left around 10 am and had another 6.5 hour bus ride with a lunch break on the way. We watched "Stand by Me" which was a very funny movie. I had never seen it!

I hope you enjoyed this entry along with the pictures!

Ps! It less than a week until Chris comes to visit! I couldn't be more stoked! :)

Ciao!