Today started off a little foggy so I decided to hold off on going up to the mountain top. So I checked out the Hofkirche (Court Church). Emperor Maximilian I liked Innsbruck so much he wanted to be buried here… surrounded by 40 larger than life cast-bronze statues of his ancestors, relatives and even his favorite heroes from the Middle Ages like King Arthur. This elaborate display was built inside this church but poor Max isn’t buried there. By the time he died, he had become notorious for running up debts so the town did not allow him to be buried inside the church. So his elaborate sarcophagus is now called a cenotaph since it does not contain a body! Weird!!
I then came out of the church and around the corner and there in front of St James church (the one I mentioned yesterday) was this large gathering of people and they were singing and praying with a priest leading everyone. Here I go again stumbling upon something interesting. They were dedicating a new church bell for the church bell tower. So everyone got a chance to ring the new bell for good luck for the church. Yep they even let me ring it with the priest in the background (did anyone hear the heavens shake when that happened?? Lol)
It then started to clear up a little so I rode the bus up to the Olympic ski jump stadium called Bergisel. It was used for both the 1964 and 1976 Olympics. The views from up there were really cool. Yes and that’s me catching some air with my skis! Lol. I also have a video of a guy who actually came down the ski ramp for a trial run if anyone wants to see it let me know. I would have given him a 10!
The rest of the day I walked all over town to more of the off the beaten areas. As you know I love the architecture on churches so I included several pics of them I found. The orange/yellow one is the Wilton Abbey, the one with two green topped steeples is the Jesuit Church and the yellow one with two steeples is the Wilton Basilica.
I then walked down along the Inn river and took a photo that I thought was a perfect representation of Innsbruck since it had the Inn River, a quaint church, colorful houses and of course the Alps in the back. Just like a post card!
Finally I saw this frilly looking house and learned it was called the Helblinghaus. It has what they call an “icing like” Rococo facade on it so the locals call this style Kucherbacker or “cake decorator”!
That’s it for today. Hope everybody had a great Hump Day. It’s supposed to be clear tomorrow so I plan to head to the top of the mountain (Sir Edmund Hillary’s got nothing on me! Lol)
Jeff
The Wandering Italian 