Vita in Vicenza: Thanksgiving in Austria 2011

For Thanksgiving this year we went to Innsbruck, Austria. We drove 3 1/2 hours to get there and Taylor decided that we should take the scenic route through the mountains to get there. Needless to say, I almost threw up because of his crazy driving and all the curves and we did NOT return the same way. Once we got through the switch backs it was beautiful.

We stayed in the small town of Tulfes, which is right outside of Innsbruck. We got there Thursday afternoon and went into Innsbruck to see the sights.

Empress Maria Theresa had the Triumphal arch built in Innsbruck. One side has images of joy and happiness to celebrate the marriage of her son and the other side has images of sorrow for her husband who died during the wedding celebrations.

All the buildings are super fancy here. This building is a sporting good store. Can you see the guy hanging from the balcony? Don't worry…he is just a manikin.

The Golden roof was built by Maximilian I (one of the Holy Roman Emperors) as his royal box.

Taylor was so excited to learn that they were having a Christmas Market the

very same day we were there!!! :)

The entire week before Taylor kept talking about our trip to Austria in an Australian accent. We found these shirts everywhere so I guess the two countries get mixed up frequently.

Every building is just so pretty in Austria.

The winter Olympics were held here in 1964 and 1976. Here is the ski jump that is still opened today.

We came back to the apartment that we rented to cook our Thanksgiving dinner.

We had a roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, and green bean casserole.

My favorite part of Thanksgiving was getting to skype with all of our family! My family was in Fort Davis and Taylor's family was all over at Granddad and Memaw's house so we had two long skype sessions!!!

The next two days we went skiing at Dubai glacier which supposedly has snow and skiing 365 days out of the year. Not sure how this works?

We were a little concerned since there was really no snow on the ground. We were thrilled when we saw snow in the distance…very distant mountain.

We parked in an area that had absolutely no snow, then rode a gondola up the hill which had a small amount of snow.

But after about 15 minutes, we arrived to snow!!!!

Taylor and I have both grown up skiing in New Mexico so we thought the snow was great! It got a little icy towards the end of the afternoon, but overall we had 2 great days of skiing.

They had these t bars that you could ride up instead of the ski lift. You basically just put it behind your bum and let it pull you. After riding it with Taylor once I decided it would be best if we rode by ourselves. You can see why by watching this video.