Before breakfast I took a lovely walk through the Court Gardens (Hofgarten) which is around the corner from our hotel and across the road from the Imperal Castle. It wasn't a fast walk as I was too busy admiring my surroundings and taking photos!
Today we visited sights outside the old town. Our first stop was the Funicular Station at Congress Hall where we travelled up in a very modern vehicle to Hungerburg which is 860m above sea level.
The town area is quite big with hotels and chalets which I am sure are busy in winter, although there were a lot of hikers and bikers about.
After a wander around the town, a look at the wonderful view below as well a visit to the lovely little Theresien church, we continued onto the next level in a cable car.
The Seegrube Station is 1.905m above sea level. It was a little hazy but the view was still wonderful. We had morning tea which was shared with the local black crows. A couple of hang gliders also enertained us.
The weather was gorgeous today and the temperature reached around 29 degrees.
We were ready to go down when we discovered that there was a mechanical fault with the cable car and it turned out that it was about 1.5 hours before it was running again.
We decided to have lunch out on the viewing deck whilst we were waiting and then took a short walk along a trail. When the cable car finally arrived we waited until the crowd of people had been taken down before we ventured down!!
Our next stop on the red bus was a lovely area of Innsbruck where the expensive real estate is. The land alone costs €250,000 a square metre which does not include a building.
The large stately houses are beautiful, some of them have small frescoes on the outside and all of them have large gardens and the streets are lined with deciduous trees.
We caught a local tram back to town and had afternoon tea was in the famous Sacher Tea House built in the outer walls of the Imperial Castle.
The Sacher chocolate torte cake was introduced by Austrian Franz Sacher in1832 for royality, he then went on to build the famous Sacher Hotel in Vienna.
The torte was just as delicious as one I had a few years ago in Vienna!!
Next it was back on the red bus to visit the Wilten Basillica which was first mentioned in 1259, as the "Our Lady" which became a place of pilgrimace to the Virgin Mary. The ruins of the first 5th century church have been found underneath.
The was an interesting grave yard in the garden.
We were hoping to visit the Wilten Abby across the road but you can not do a tour without an appointment! The present Baroque building dates back to the 1650s, although it was heavily bombed by the Americans in 1944 after having been looted and partially destroyed a couple of years earlier.
It is still used as a high order catholic church where a lot of pastoral work is carried out.
We again caught the local tram back to the city.
We completed our day with a great meal in a little restaurant we found tucked away in a little side street of the old town.
Innsbruck has stolen my heart!!