Road-Trip Day 2

After a quiet breakfast, we continued driving on small regional roads south through Alsace, past countless Sunflower plantations and and tiny quiet villages. The scenery was nice, but got a little repetitive until we hit the Swiss border. We decided to enter Switzerland.

This probably wasn't too wise. We were forced to pay for a year's worth of road tax (around 30€) for not even a day's worth of travel, which was probably why ViaMichelin wanted us to cut through Germany in the first place.

We continued on until we reached Zürich, where we stopped for lunch. Before we found a place for lunch, however, we wanted to find out the exchange rate, so we found a McDonald's (partially exploiting the Big Mac Index) before searching for an ATM.

We parked the car in an old converted bunker and ate at a place on Niederdorfstrasse in old-town Zürich, which runs parallel to the river from Starbucks… err, I mean Bahnhofbrücke, down to the famous Grossmünster. Afterwards, we went for a small wander around the old-town, which is quite beautiful.

We only spent a few hours in Zürich, but it was enough to know I should go back and see it properly.

When we finally hit the road again, we headed towards Innsbruck, passing through some beautiful mountainous terrain. Just out of Innsbruck, we stopped to take some photos along Tiroler-Bundesstraße. We soon realised that the area we stopped at was used for nude bathing.

Innsbruck itself lies within a valley surrounded by two mountains, and seems more like a holiday destination during winter. We tried to find a place to stay close to the old town centre, but couldn't find anything available except for a hotel on the outskirts.

In fact, this hotel was being staffed by two Romanian students, and for some reason they weren't sure if they had room available, so we waited for half an hour as requested to find out. Ultimately, they said they didn't have room there but had room at another “hotel” which they would drive us to when their friend arrived.

Their friend turned out to be another Romanian student, who insisted on us driving him to this other “hotel”, for which we paid for already albeit at supposedly discount rates.

It turns out the other “hotel” was in fact vacant student accommodation for the University of Innsbruck that these kids were renting out as hotel rooms. Unsure how to deal with this, Scott and I made sure the door was securely locked and couldn't be unlocked from the other side before going to bed.