On an Alps road trip, we stopped in Innsbruck, Austria, to soak in the gorgeous views.

Welcome! If you’re new here and have stumbled on this blog through the magical and mythical powers of the Internet, my name is Ashley. This blog post is about a journey and road trip I took throughout Europe, but usually I write posts about travel, books, movies, and the television shows I’m watching throughout the years. It’s a bit of a digital diary and archive of sorts.

Some context for this blog post: in 2024 I won a Fulbright, then I lost it when the country I was selected for refused to give me a visa after a four month wait. It was a confusing time for me, as I had quit my job for this opportunity, and suddenly I was left unemployed and without any prospects ahead of me.

I did end up taking a year off in order to focus on my goals, as I was in the right financial situation and had enough savings, and in December I decided to take a leap of faith and book a five country Europe tour through EF Ultimate Break.

I’ll be writing a review of the company and tour on my blog, but I paid about $4,300 with all the excursions and whatnot to roam around Europe. I needed to unplug and not think, and I could afford the tour that would give me that.

As I mentioned before, I’m going to be writing blog posts for each of the countries and cities I visited during this trip, except for Liechtenstein, as we only went to that country for only thirty minutes as a bathroom break on the way to Switzerland.

Today’s blog post is dedicated to our second stop of the trip, which was about a few hours during our drive from Venice. We left Venice early in the morning, packed all of our stuff in the bus, and then promptly got stuck in a traffic jam in Verona. Thankfully, that didn’t take away from our time in Innsbruck, but we did end up getting there a little later than expected.

We were only in Innsbruck for a few hours, as our main destination was actually Salzburg in Austria. We were going the Salzburg-Munich-Lucerne-Engleberg route, but while Innsbruck is pretty, I don’t think you need more than a few days there unless you see it as a destination to unwind and relax in. The vibe is pretty slow and simple in this location.

Let’s get into what we did! I can sense this introduction is getting a bit long already.

Innsbruck is a gorgeous and youthful town at the foot of several mountains.

During the drive into Innsbruck, we could already see how the city itself was framed by mountains. It’s like in the lower part of the Alps, so as you get into the main area, where the crystal blue river flows (our tour guide explained to us that the water in the Alps is so pretty to look at because of the minerals), the multicolored houses are all peeking out at the mountains.

We got off of our bus by the local university, which our guide explained was a reason why this is actually quite a youthful town. Wherever we went in Innsbruck we noticed how young the people living in this immediate area were, and a lot of them were quite fit.

Most Europeans are more fit than the average American, that’s for sure, but this crew went beyond the cycling and into the hiking territory. Anyways, we wandered along the river and saw the houses and buildings dotting the small skyline, then we went into the historic district.

There are quite a few shops, restaurants, and biergartens in the historic area of town. We were planning to save the shopping for later, and our guide pointed out some local places we should stop in, as well as the jewelry store that had a free bathroom we could use.

After that, we had a free break to do whatever we wanted for the few hours we were in town.

Going up the mountain has some of the best views—and a scenic hike down, albeit a bit scary in some ways if you’re not prepared.

Our tour guide tipped us off that the view of the town was gorgeous if you went up the mountain, and I joined a larger group that was planning to do just that. We took a five minute walk from the historic district, past the city building (which has some gorgeous architecture as well—it reignited my interest in going to Vienna) to the train station.

Everyone else bought their tickets at the kiosk, but I was dumb and thought that going to the counter would be easier. The woman there refused to accept my student ID because it didn’t say a year or date, while everyone else at the kiosk had no problems buying their tickets and weren’t checked. I still got my ticket for about 8 euros for a one way ticket, and we waited for the next tram up.

The second stop was the one we were planning to get off at, although you can take the train up to the top of the mountain (however, it costs more the higher you go up the mountain, so if you’re on a budget, you might want to hike or be more choose-y about what you pick). We got off, and right away it puts you in an area that has an extremely nice view of the town from above.

We took a lot of pictures there, then stopped at the cafe at the top. I needed a quick sandwich because I didn’t eat at the rest stop in Italy like everyone else, and some people picked up beers and snacks. We then calculated we needed an hour to get back down to the main area, and we began the hike down.

Google Maps was taking us down a path with sidewalks, but then some in our group decided to take the sketchy trail on the side of the road. It turned out to be pretty, but easy to slip because of the fallen leaves on the ground make it less stable than it would have been without. I really liked the hike, and it turns out we made the right decision because the sidewalk route eventually lost the sidewalk and it became more dangerous according to some girls who continued down that path.

Our trail spat us out at the bottom of the mountain, and we weaved through a residential area and ended up at the river where we started.

This is also a good place to pick up some souvenirs.

Besides soaking in the views as we descended, we made our way back to the main part of the historic district to pick up some souvenirs. As I mentioned before, there are a lot of little shops. We noticed this area was a lot more crowded than before pretty quickly, so we had to elbow our way through some crowds—although it was not as crowded as Venice ended up being after noon, which is where we came from.

I liked the souvenir options here more than our other destination in Austria, Salzburg. I was able to pick up some cheap pins here, which I found to be a little more expensive in Salzburg with less options. Nothing was more expense than the ones I got in Switzerland, though, as I thought those were overpriced (I paid ~$8 USD a pin in Lucerne).

Some of our group headed off to a biergarten to get some beers, and I headed off with a few other people to take some last looks at the river before we had to leave. I discovered my water bottle had entirely leaked right after that, leaving all of my stuff in an inch of water, so I spent some time drying it off in the bathroom before we gathered together to leave for Salzburg.

And that was it for Innsbruck! It was such a cute little town, and I could see myself living somewhere like this pursuing my little writer dreams until the end of time. It was truly a vibe, although I don’t know if I’ll make it back here in the future. It’s not at the top of my list, honestly, but I loved it a lot in the moment.

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