At the end of the street here you can see Innsbruck's #1 attraction, the roof of gold, which is quite a letdown. I remember being disappointed with Innsbruck, the city, last time I was here, but this time it is growing on me. Spent today sightseeing and sitting around and enjoyed it. Went into the Olympic Museum (Winter Olympics 64, 76) and saw highlights of the olympics here. Pretty boring overall, but actually got to touch Franz Klammers's gold-medal skis! Coupled with my trips to the ski jump and bobsled runs, I got a good feel for sports as the modern identity of Innsbruck. But the nice part of the city is its older character. The main downtown, shown on the card is blocked off to traffic: most of the buildings in a several block area were built in 1400-1500. As you can see, they lean somewhat.

Just on the edge of the old section is a large palace built by Maria Theresa. She lived in it for only two weeks and her husband died there, so she never went back. The palace wasn't as nice as her main palace, Shonbrünn, back in Vienna, but its location had a really nice feel because it looked into the city streets on one side, at the main church on the other side, and at a park on another. Here you feel that the governing body is a part of the city. Of course the palace was yet another showcase for huge pictures of her entire family.

Had a nice sit and lunch on the lawn outside the palace, with church dome behind, and Alps behind that. After all that exertion (we were planning to climb a mountain) we found the other garden where a band was playing waltzes/marches, so we sat there for a while. Finally, we got the bikes, rode past the finest Rococo church in Tirol, and then on to a small schloss (castle) which was open for walking outside only. We continued on up the hill, the very steep hill, and long, to the site of the olympic bobsled and luge and skeleton. The track was incredibly steep and banked, then we discovered that we were looking at the part where they slow down.

Had an authentic goulash stew, according to our Hungarian expert, and then...