A Renaissance castle, a Golden Eagle and Christmas markets
Sunday 18 December

The day has been fine and cold with a thick frost on the grass in places. There is a light snow covering on the upper slopes of the mountains around the city.

We started the day with a ride on the Sightseer bus, taking an 18km circuit around Innsbruck and enjoying an interesting commentary.

We got off the bus at Schloss Ambras and spent an hour exploring this Renaissance castle. This was the residence of Archduke Ferdinand II, prince of Tyrol, who rebuilt an earlier castle in 1565 as a home for his world-famous collections. It is considered to be the oldest museum in the world!

One of Ferdinand ‘s largest collections was his armoury where we saw a display with seven young princes in armour, protected by their caretaker giant, also in armour, who was 2.6m tall!

Other highlights of the castle were the inner courtyard with its frescoed walls, the chanel and the beautiful Spanish Hall, with its full-figure portraits of the princely rulers of Tyrol.

Inner courtyard

The Chapel

The Spanish Hall

The second stop on our bus trip was at the ‘Tirol Panorama’ where we all piled off the bus to take photos.

We had lunch today at the Goldener Adler (the Golden Eagle), a very popular and long-standing Innsbruck restaurant which Ian booked back in March. Ian chose an entrée of mashed potato with quails’ breasts and pumpkin, followed by Austrian rib-eye steak with a bell pepper sauce and potato wedges. My choice was a beef bouillon with a cheese dumpling, followed by Grostl (a typical Tyrolean dish of sliced beef and potato topped with a fried egg), and finely shredded cabbage and bacon on the side. We both enjoyed a bottle of Austrian red wine (variety - blaufrankisch).

We had a lovely afternoon wandering through the three Christmas markets in the city area. It was very festive with lots of young family groups enjoying the sights, choirs singing carols and people of all ages enjoying themselves. By four o’clock it was starting to get dark and the stalls were festooned with fairy lights. Just how we had imagined a European Christmas would be!