Day in Innsbruck, and onto Venice
Innsbruck
Did laundry, paid parking ticket… Took the gondola to the top of the mountain.
Drive to Venice
Random ramblings and sights on the way to Venice.
Checking into the Hotel and Dinner
Had difficulties with checking in because no one spoke English. We were too exhausted to find dinner anywhere nearby, so we went to the restaurant by the hotel and were pleasantly surprised.
Innsbruck
We woke up and got breakfast (which was decent, but I liked the Reinbold’s spread of breakfast better). We packed up and drove to Innsbruck to do our laundry, get some cash, and pay our parking ticket. Our laundry took about 2 hours, and during that time we were organizing pictures and writing blog entries. We got lunch at a little pizzeria (a prosciutto & mushroom pizza and tortellini filled with some delicious stuff). Evan found out we could pay the ticket at a bank, since the post office we went to was closed until 2pm. Although I’m really afraid of heights, Evan really wanted to take the gondola to the top of the mountain, and Innsbruck does look rather pretty… so I agreed to go. Thousands of feet later (and all the while one of the people was talking about the gondola falling yesterday that killed a person and two other people who sustained major injuries), we made it to the first station. The second station was closed (conceivably due to the accident).
Drive to Venice
Afterwards, we started to head to Venice, our next destination. It’s a four-hour, beautiful drive. There were quite a few rain clouds hovering ominously over the mountains, so it may not be as extraordinary as it could have been. We going into Bolzano, Italy and there were tons of vineyards. I don’t think I’ve seen that many vineyards; although it is Italy. Italians do love their food and wine. During our drive, I remembered that we forgot to get the address for a chocolate maker & chocolatier (they’re actually different; chocolatiers use chocolate made by chocolate makers). So this particular maker buys cacao beans from all over the world, processes them into chocolate, and makes world-class chocolate in Italy. I wonder if they entertain visits… we may need to give them a call. I hope we haven’t passed them; I hope it’s on our way up out of Italy. We saw a really large castle-like building; perhaps an abbey or enclosed city or fortress… or just a castle that took up an entire hill in Calliano… and lots and lots of vineyards.
Checking into the Hotel and Dinner
We got to this quaint little hotel (Relais Villa Selvetico) around 7:30pm, but checking in took quite a bit of time. There was no one at the front desk, but Evan’s name was circled on the paper as if they were expecting him. There was an American family there that was also trying to help him. To make things more confusing, the front door locked every time when closed. So he finally got to the restaurant next door under the family’s recommendation. Someone in the restaurant sent another person who didn’t speak English (actually, none of the staff spoke English) to check him in. There was a lot of running around, and if it weren’t for the American family, we may be still rather confused. What we didn’t realize was the same family ran both the hotel and the restaurant. We figured we would try the restaurant next door, since it was convenient.
The restaurant was gorgeous- the room we were in had a beautiful painted ceiling with lots of framed paintings on the walls, pretty tablecloths, candles, and fresh flowers. It was the type of place that would be about $40 per person in the U.S., but the seafood menu was really affordable for the setting- 16 Euros a person. This included a delicious chocolate mousse dessert (5 Euros), lobster spaghetti (for 10 Euros), ravioli with fish, eggplant, and tomato (9 Euros), and two 75cl mineral waters (yes, everywhere in Europe charges for water). The lobster was fresh from a tank, and everything was presented artistically- it was not plopped down on a plate. Everything was clean too, and we were not rushed out of the restaurant. It made us (and our tummies) very very happy.
We watched the rest of Happy Feet (that we started in the car on our drive to the hotel) afterwards.