Day trip to Innsbruck–gem in the Tyrolean Alps
I finally found myself back on Höhenstraße, the main road I was on before taking the nature detour. Here is a rather beautiful building.
And alas, the grand vista point I had been trekking many hours for.
Unbeknownst to myself hitherto that moment, there is a funicular railway that goes from Innsbruck centrum to that very lookout spot. The building below marks the upper terminal for the Hungerburgbahn.
The mere existence of this thing infuriated me; while I hiked for hours up random roads and trails in search of a view and just miraculously ended up in a place such designated, they built a fucking train to haul clueless tourists up there with no effort on their part.
I took one more panorama as the train pulled into the station. Then I had a beer or two at a nearby restaurant, before buying tickets for the aerial tram.
Here is a picture of a map I took to giving a sense of the area.
Here’s the tram arriving now.
Unfortunately, the weather quickly started returning to shit.
To get to the top of the mountain there are two cable cars, and at the middle station everyone just walks down a hallway onto the next one. I decided that continuing on to the summit was futile because it was already beneath the cloud ceiling, so I could walked outside and took pictures from there.
Here is a big panorama of Innsbruck right as the rain starts to roll in.
And then it started. Luckily I had my umbrella!
It got dark and wet really fast, so I walked back inside to wait for a ride down. I was basically only up there for five minutes, and the ticket probably cost something like 40 euros. But at least I made it up there which I set out to do in the beginning, so I still felt accomplished despite the weather not cooperating.
I spotted bikers riding down the mountain below us.
Dreary.
Once back at the bottom, I decided to walk back to the city center and head home. It was still a good hour or so away, and I wasn’t about to take the bus or walk down the road again. This time a found a new wider trail leading down, and set upon it with my umbrella. Here is another random shrine in the middle of nowhere.
Here I wanted to get a shot of me in front of this river, and after setting the timer I had ten seconds to hop around the water and stand in a precarious place. I took this shot like five different times, and on this last shot I started losing my balance.
I tried holding it until the shutter snapped, and as soon as it did I ended up standing in the water with my shoes soaking wet.
As I walked down the trail I came to another station for the Bergbahn, with the same futuristic building design. This stop was for Alpenzoo or Alpine Zoo. Knowing that the train terminated in the town center, I more or less followed the nature paths in that direction.
Here the train disappears into a tunnel. I’m glad I decided to walk down and enjoy the nature instead.
As I got lower and as the sky cleared again, I got another shot of the city.
Here is my second favorite photo of the day: a covered bridge suspended in the trees. I just love how you can live in this big city, and just moments away you’re deep in the forest with little gems like this.
I came to a river crossing via another covered bridge, this one much longer.
This is an awesome pano that took me a long time to take, setting up my tripod and bracketing for HDR. Except I didn’t end up using HDR, because HDR+pano is a nightmare and photoshop sucks at HDR anyways and everything ends up looking flat and unrealistic. Luckily, I was able to push the raw files enough so that the highlights aren’t totally blown out.
