Second Day in Munich, and Onwards to Austria
Deutshe Museum
Checked out of the hotel and went to the Deutshe museum (which is a gigantic version of the Museum of Science in Boston).
Sound of Music Tour
Took the Sound of Music tour with Bob’s Special Tours- the tour guide was especially good. It was actually an excellent introduction to Salzburg as well.
Drive to Zirl
Driving to a bit out of Innsbruck- Zirl, where our hotel is. We had lots of traffic issues but the navigation helped us out.
Deutshe Museum
We woke up a bit late today, so we had to cut our visit to the Deutshe museum by a half an hour or so. We also had to check out of the Reinbold hotel in Munich.The museum was gigantic- 11 acres of random cool toys and lots of historical pieces of technology too. Evan will probably add on to this a bit later.
Sound of Music tour
We thought the drive to Salzburg would only take an hour and a half, but it ended up being a bit longer, plus the five to ten minute stop buying a vignette and two vests (which is required in Austria to have). We ended up making the Sound of Music tour that we booked earlier that morning; the lady said if we were thirty seconds late then we wouldn’t have made it. Since we were in a rush, the only parking we could find was 3-hour parking, and the tour was four hours. We’ll get into that later. The website was a bit sketchy, and the name of the tour company is Bob’s Special Tours, although Anna-Marie did our tour. She was amazingly friendly, nice, and thought about our preferences. We had a small city tour that related to the Sound of Music as well as general historic sites, which was nice. She then drove us around to castles that the Sound of Music was based on/shot on, and the gazebo. It rained while we were at the gazebo, perhaps a few minutes too early, but it didn’t rain afterwards… funny, since in the Sound of Music, it also only rained at the gazebo. We stopped by a place where you could try out the luge on a metal track, and Evan tried it out (which was utterly fantastic to him). The tour also stopped by a decent coffeeshop, where Evan and I got an apple strudel and a sacher cake. Evan and I both thought the sacher (a specialty of Salzburg) was a bit dry for our tastes, but perhaps that’s the nature of the cake. The apple strudel was unbelievably good. I’m still craving some, although I don’t think I can handle much more food. We were dropped back at Alterstradt, which is like “old town,†where we originally parked the car. Anna-Marie recommended a restaurant in the area but we couldn’t find it and we were quite hungry. We went to a decent restaurant in the area for dinner, where Evan and I got salmon & broccoli with noodles and a breaded turkey dish.
Drive to Zirl
We then headed out to Zirl (where our hotel is), which is a little west of Innsbruck. We were stuck in traffic for a long time; there was construction that blocked off a major section of the freeway, but thanks to the navigation, we found other ways to get there… instead of sitting in traffic for four or five hours. The first route we tried was blocked off because the only bridge (the next closest one was rather far away) across the river was closed. That was strange, so we went on another alternative route, and we made it. It was rather funny when we exited onto the freeway but there was absolutely no one else behind us because they were doing construction on that section of the freeway. We were both rather tired so we didn’t do anything else when we checked into the hotel (most everything was closed anyways). The Tyrolis hotel was also pretty amazing; no complaints- except the internet was down during our stay.