#TheInnsbruckTour

Two weekends ago Torin and I decided to make our way up to Innsbruck, Austria. It's famous for it's adorable colorful houses along the river with the fantastic Austrian Alps in every direction. It's also famous for it's Swarovski Crystal factory and for it's skiing.

I think my very favorite thing about Europe are the colors. Italy is all yellow, red and oranges, Paris was silver, gold, and green and Innsbruck was covered in pink! Therefore, it's my favorite.

Torin and I wandered through the old town with Zeus, who loved all the smells, other dogs and people. Which brings me to my second favorite thing about Europe, dogs go where humans go. Literally. Sometimes they wait outside grocery stores, but that's about the only place I haven't seen one.  We visited a beautiful church, The Golden Roof Museum and climbed up a tower to overlook the old town.

We made our way to the Swarovski Crystal factory/museum the next day, and it was weird. I know art is subjective and theoretic, but this.. All of the exhibits were made with the crystal, in some form or another, so everything was very colorful and sparkly. However, the room that had the dancing legs coming out of the wall, well, it startled me. And that was the very beginning of the exhibit. 

My favorite exhibit, was a circular room, made entirely of triangular mirrors. I believe it was fancy Swarovski glass that was in the mirrors, but I had a hard time reading the German. 

Our final day was my favorite day. For starters, Torin found a milk dispenser across the street from our hotel, and if you haven't had milk from a dispenser (yea, I know, it's sounds odd) you haven't lived. I swear it's milk straight out of the cows... Oh and the cows, there was a small pen filled with several grey baby cows. Yes, I did almost die. 

(This one above, he was sassy. He tried to eat my shirt and kept licking me and sticking his tongue out)

We toured a palace that belonged to Maximilian I, but after seeing Versialles at Christmas, and the Biltmore on our road trip last spring, I have to say, old Maxi's palace just wasn't anything special to me. Torin say's I've been spoiled. I think the only thing that this palace had that the rest of them didn't was an amazing view of the Alps.

We made our way to the AlpenZoo shortly after. The typical animals you find in the Alps (or any other mountain region) were there - eagles, buffalo, bears, moose (I HATE moose), beavers etc. There was also a farm animals section, which I thoroughly enjoyed, since I was allowed to pet and feed the animals. (Plus there were lambs and baby cows!)

Torin and I have been to a few zoos together, Alaska and North Carolina, and Yellowstone - while it's not a zoo, there are certainly pleeeenty of wildlife roaming around to see. But I have never seen a wolf before. There were five or six of them roaming around their little camp and they were big. Bigger than I'd anticipated, I've seen foxes and coyotes, but these guys make Zeus look like a shrimp.

The last part of our tour was spent riding a gondola to the top of the Alps. It was really cool. We could see the whole city spread out and there were mountains everywhere you looked. Zeus was a little skeptical of the ride up, but as soon as he saw snow it was love at first sight.

The view from the top was absolutely breathtaking. Mountains as far as the eye can see, which I've been missing since we left Alaska. And Zeus clearly missed the snow, he rolled, dug holes and bounced around the mountain top. We're a snow and mountain kind of family as it is, Alaska will always be one of my favorite places on earth, but I think Innsbruck has made it's way into the top ten...  xo