Top of Tyrol at Stubaier Gletscher

After breakfast at the AC Hotel, we checked out, left our bags at the train station, and took a bus down to Stubaier Gletscher. We visited the Top of Tyrol before descending and returning to Innsbruck. After lunch, we returned to Munich by train and bus and checked into the Le Méridien.

Morning

We woke up at sunrise at the AC Hotel in Innsbruck one last time as we will be returning to Munich tonight to catch our flight home tomorrow.

We headed downstairs for our last breakfast here at the hotel. We’ll definitely miss the sweet bread and bacon!

We returned to the room for some final preparations before checking out. The Sun was now a bit higher on the horizon.

We checked out and departed, bringing our bags with us as we wanted to leave them at the train station for easier access. There was an Edelweiss beer delivery truck across the street making a delivery.

We left our bags in a locker in the train station. The lockers were quite big. The large locker that we picked ended up being larger than we needed.

We then headed outside to catch the next bus down to Stubaier Gletscher. As the name suggests, Stubaier Gletscher is at the end of the Stubaital (Stubai Valley). We picked this destination for today as it can be reached via a single bus ride on route #590. There are actually two variations of this route, A and B, but they both go to Stubaier Gletscher.

As the bus departed Innsbruck, we noticed this large mural advertising milk from the local state of Tyrol.

The bus then ascended the foothills to the south of Innsbruck and headed into the valley that leads to the Stubaital. This valley just to the south of the city forks a few miles out with the western side being the Stubaital and the eastern side leading to the Brenner Pass and Italy.

The Europabrücke, formerly the tallest bridge in Europe at 190 meters, crosses the river Sill in the valley below. The bridge carries the highway that links Innsbruck with Italy to the south.

This photo was from a little bit past the bridge as the bridge wasn’t really photogenic in any way while traveling across it.

The bus continued on to enter the Stubaital and passed through various rural landscapes.

Stubaier Gletscher

There are actually two nearby bus stops for Stubaier Gletscher, both which have gondola stations. The station for the Eisgratbahn is Neustift im Stubaital Eisgratbahn, the closer of the two stations to Innsbruck. This is the gondola that was operating during our visit. However, the other one, Gamsgarten, seems like it also may operate during the summer. The bus stop for that gondola is Neustift im Stubaital Stubaier Gletscher.

We didn’t realize this until we were pretty close to arriving. We figured the Eisgratbahn was the right place to exit, and it was, but it isn’t clear that this is always the case.

After arriving, we walked upstairs to buy tickets to the Top of Tyrol, the highest point that can be accessed here by gondola at 3,210 meters. This isn’t really the top of Tyrol at all given that we were at higher elevations the day before yesterday at Hintertuxer Gletscher and yesterday at Pitztal Gletscher. Pitztal wins this elevation battle at 3,440 meters.

We also picked up a large brochure about the summer activities in the Stubaital.

While buying tickets, we noticed that there were some cows just beyond the far end of the parking lot. We walked over to take a closer look.

Moo!

The Eisgratbahn Talstation as seen from the far end of the parking lot. Its not particularly large but also contains an Intersport store at the lower level.

There is also a locker room for the ski season, which we could see from the elevator by the bathrooms which are on an intermediate floor.

We headed up on what Stubaier Gletscher refers to as the 3S Eisgratbahn. The 3S prefix apparently identifies this cableway as a tri-cable system. The Eiger Express at Grindelwald in Switzerland‘s Jungfrau Region is a similar system that we’ve taken multiple times now. These gondola carriages were actually pretty similar in that they were pretty large as far as gondolas go, though they didn’t seem as big as the ones at the Eiger Express.

According to Wikipedia, this type of cableway was first developed in Thun, Switzerland, a town that we visited last year. They have two support cables and one drive cable. This particular system was made by Leitner. We recently learned that Leitner is actually nearby in the town of Vipiteno, Sterzing in German, in Italy near the Brenner Pass. We considered visiting this town but decided to visit a bunch of mountain peaks instead!

We passed through the mid-mountain Fernau station at 2,300 meters elevation.

The gondola is quite spacious!

We continued on until reaching the Eisgrat mountain station.

We then continued our trip up on the Schaufeljochbahn gondola. The mountain station at the end of the line is at 3,170 meters at the Schaufeljoch. A joch is basically a local minimum between two higher points, something that could be described as a mountain pass in English. The Schaufeljoch is next to the peak of the 3,332 meter Schaufelspitze.

While we will not be visiting the top of the Schaufelspitze, we did visit the Top of Tyrol viewing platform above the Schaufeljoch at 3,210 meters elevation. This platform is accessed by a relatively steep and long metal stairway. The platform was somewhat small and busy but was big enough to have a bench to sit on.

We managed to create a nearly 360° panorama from the Top of Tyrol.

The view to the south mainly consists of a bowl with a surface lift running through the middle of it.

There is a small peak just to the west of the Top of Tyrol platform. Looking on OpenStreetMap, this peak is Großer Isidor with an elevation of 3,210 meters. This is the same elevation listed for the platform that we’re on so one of these two isn’t correct.

There is a kind of decorative metal structure beneath the platform that makes it a bit like it is on rails.

A panoramic view to the north shows the Eisgrat mountain station below as well as a bit of the stairs we used to access the Top of Tyrol.

Two wide but not panoramic scenes in this northern direction.

The peak here to the east is the Schaufelspitze. The building below is the Schaufeljochbahn’s upper station.

We switched to the telephoto lens to take a look around. There were people up on the summit of Schaufelspitze.

The Eisgrat station below is pretty large and looks to have a large rooftop deck on the right.

We looked to see the Eisgratbahn’s large gondolas traveling near a reservoir filled with glacial water.

The Schaufeljochbahn’s standard gondolas are much smaller.

Looking down, we could see one of the large six person lifts of the Eisjochbahn.

We also looked around at some of the other peaks in the area.

Like nearly all the peaks here, this wider one has a cross at the top. Also visible is a hiker as well as what seems like the top of the Moon in the background! It is quite faint through and the very top of the Moon is aligned with the top of the cross atop the peak.

The Moonset for Innsbruck today is at 11:02am to the west so it seems reasonable that we did manage to inadvertently capture the Moon. Both time and direction are correct as well as is its location approaching the horizon. The Moon does actually show up in some of the photos we took earlier but its barely visible and requires close examination to see.

We continued to look at the peaks both far and near.

This photo contains two notable identifiable features. There is a building and gondola station that can be seen on the tallest mountain on the right. The mountain is Hinterer Brunnenkogel, about twenty miles away. The building near its peak contains the mountain station of the Wildspitzbahn gondola and Cafe 3440 at Pitztaler Gletscher, which we visited yesterday!

There is a less prominent appearing peak near the bottom right corner of the frame. Again, there are buildings and a gondola station visible. This is Gaislachkogl, about ten miles away. This mountain and its Ice Q restaurant were in the 2015 James Bond movie Spectre. The peak also includes a James Bond museum, 007 Elements.

This is the Gaislachkogl middle station, which is on the route to the peak.

Just some chairlifts on the side of a mountain that we happened to photograph.

Closer by, these three were hiking through the glacial area which still had snow on the ground.

This small pond seemed to be a popular place for people to take a short hike down to from the Schaufeljoch mountain station.

The path leading to it looked a little steep but otherwise not hard.

We headed back down the metal stairs to return to the Schaufeljoch mountain station.

While the landscape at this elevation seemed pretty desolate, there were small signs of life here and there.

We walked through the station to exit on the east side to take a look.

There were a few benches here just outside of the station. The path descends steeply, leading to a small snowfield as well as the pond we saw earlier from the Top of Tyrol platform.

The summit of Schaufelspitze was directly in front of us. There were quite a few people hiking up and down to and from the summit. From this perspective, it was possible to make out the trail in places but overall it looked pretty rough. The small structure in the foreground is a small chapel.

We walked down to the small snowfield to take a look.

We then walked back up to take the Schaufeljochbahn back down.

It was around 11:30am when we returned to the Eisgrat mountain station.

The station has a small up-only escalator to the left of center here.

This wooden sculpture is dedicated to Dr. Heinrich Klier. We encountered his name before as he was credited with creating the Zirbenweg. He was also founder of Wintersport Tirol and Stubaier Bergbahnen, which seem to be the companies that operate Stubaier Gletscher.

Outside, a wooden sign lists various destinations in the area.

We walked around the area a bit, ending up on the far side of the building before returning.

We went back inside the station to visit the panoramic terrace on the roof.

It was a nice quiet spot.

There were a few tables but it seems very few people come up here.

After going back inside, we noticed this clock made out of a metal pan as well as a woodpecker!

We went into the Intersport store within the station to take a look at what they were selling. We ended up just buying two small Mozart chocolates as Mozart was from Austria.

We walked back over to the Eisgratbahn to head back down to the valley below.

A brief recording of the gondola departing the station.

We were back down in the valley at around 12:30pm.

The Intersport store at the valley station had various items on sale. Nothing that we wanted to buy through.

We ended up taking the next bus that arrived to Neustift im Stubaital Stubaier Gletscher bus stop, which is the stop for the Gamsgarten gondola. We wanted to go check out a nearby waterfall. It turns out that there was construction going on and everything looked to be inaccessible due to construction fencing. So, we quickly got on the next bus that was heading to Innsbruck which was just about to leave as we arrived!

This is just a rather nice looking bus shelter that we passed by on the way back to Innsbruck.

Innsbruck

Rather than walk, we decided to take a tram to the Altstadt. This was our first time taking a tram in Innsbruck!

Yesterday, we were pretty sure that we had our last gelatos from Tomaselli. However, we got two more cones today! We got the blackberry again as well as lemon. They were excellent as always. This is definitely the most we’ve been to a single establishment on a trip!

It was a beautiful afternoon in Innsbruck. It was mostly sunny but with occasional clouds.

We decided to get a quick late lunch before leaving Innsbruck. We ended up walking through the RathausGalerien. As the name suggests, this is a shopping gallery attached to the city’s town hall.

We arrived at Zum Wohl Tirol‘s Die Burgerbar (The Burger Bar) just after their 3pm opening time. We started with the lcaol Bierol brewery’s Zapfn. It is described as a Zirbenradler. Radler is a German mix of beer and lemonade while Zirben is the stone pine, the namesake of the Zirbenweg which we mentioned earlier and hiked on our second day of this trip.

We ordered two burgers, both medium rare. The bacon cheeseburger was good enough that it really didn’t need any of the sauce that was on it at all. We’re not sure what US style is supposed to mean though. What would European style be?

This was kind of cool because the cheese was in a upside-down condiment cup atop the burger. The waiter lifted it up, causing it to spill the cheese over the burger. Pretty cool. It was tasty too with a nice truffle taste. The black chili nugget on top was very good too.

We considered visiting Ichiban Tea, which was right by the nearby tram stop and had a kawaii Shiba Inu logo. We didn’t though as we were pretty skeptical about this Japanese branding with Taiwanese products.

We returned to the Hauptbahnhof to begin our trip back to Munich. We actually realized on the first day of this trip that due to rail construction, we would need to take a train replacement bus near the border with Germany. There were a number of options but the most sensible routing for us was to take the train to Kufstein, an Austrian town on the border with Germany, and then take the rail replacement bus to Rosenheim, a small city in Germany where we could catch a train to Munich.

Unfortunately, the next direct train to Kufstein wasn’t for awhile. We decided to pick up our bags from the storage locker and take the next local train to Worgl, a town that was on the way to Kufstein. And from there, transfer to a different train to Kufstein. Spending time on air conditioned trains was more comfortable than waiting here. Also, it was approaching the evening rush hour so we were concerned about how busy the train might be.

We already had the regional 2Plus Day Ticket, which would allow us to take any non-long distance train in Tyrol and some of the surrounding areas. We purchased separate DB tickets from Kufstein to Munich, again allowing us to take any local services between these points via Rosenheim. So we had flexibility to take a variety of trains rather than being stuck on a specific departure.

We arrived at Worgl at around 5pm. After waiting at the station for awhile, we caught the next train and got to Kufstein at around 6pm. Signage at Kufstein was pretty poor for the rail replacement bus service and it wasn’t clear exactly where the bus would arrive or what kind of bus it would be. There were many people waiting for various busses though. From what we could tell, no one really knew exactly where the bus would show up.

Kufstein actually has a fortress, the Festung Kufstein, right across the river Inn from the train station. We caught a glimpse of it from the station. It looked pretty impressive. Unfortunately, according to OBB’s website, Kufstein does not have storage lockers. If it did, we probably would have left Innsbruck earlier and went over to take a look.

Eventually, a bus showed up with a sign for Rosenheim. The trip to Rosenheim is roughly 25 miles and takes less than 30 minutes by train. The bus took considerably longer as first, it was boarded by the German Bundespolizei at a border checkpoint. It took them awhile to clear the bus to continue on. Then, the bus went via local roads in order to stop at a few train stations on the way.

The name Rosenheim seemed familiar for some reason. We realized that it is one of the stations between Munich and Salzburg and thus would have passed through it twice when we were here before. During that trip, on our way back, the train was delayed for awhile at Freilassing, the first German town on the way from Salzburg. This seemed to happen to the train we took back to Munich as well. We would have missed it if it wasn’t for this delay as our bus was late too.

Munich

We ended up arriving in Munich at around 8:20pm as the Sun was setting. We remembered this side platform at the Munich Hauptbahnhof that we arrived on from our previous trip to Munich.

We walked over to the Le Meridien to check in. The hotel is conveniently located across the street from the station on the south side. We stayed here during our previous trip to Munich in 2024.

We received a room on the top floor facing the train station.

From our room’s window, we could see the train station in the foreground. The station is currently undergoing a large renovation project which was already in progress when we were here previously.

The room had a somewhat decently sized bathroom and a shower that was sort of tucked into a weird little alcove. It was kind of like walking into a doorless walk in closet, but instead of the closet, there was a shower around the corner.

This shower had a curtain, which is becoming unusual in modern hotel rooms. And this curtain was absolutely disgusting. It basically hadn’t been properly washed for a long time. It looked fine up above but down below, not so much. This is something we’d expect in a crummy motel in the US rather than the Le Meridien, which is considered by Marriott to be one of their premium brands. We wouldn’t expect this is one of the lower end Marriott brands either or any of its equivalent competitors.

Later on in the evening, when it was shower time, we ended up calling down to the front desk to complain. The front desk was completely incapable of having any solution, for example, delivering a new shower curtain. We ended up tossing it out of the room for them to take away and replaced it with many bath towels on the floor so as not to flood the room. At least they were quick in taking away the curtain and providing the requested towels.

While we’re complaining, the shower head was also pretty terrible. It was mounted way too close to the wall and thus could not be properly aimed downwards. Surprisingly, showering didn’t result in too much water outside at all.

August 14th, 2025

Although we weren’t able to talk to a manager when we checked out due to it being too early, they did reach out to us via email to offer apologies as well as a nice amount of points. We appreciate the gesture and hope that they’re able to keep this from happening with other future guests.

We decided we wanted to get something quick to eat. We decided to try Slurp Nudelbar as it was near the Hauptbahnhof, had very good reviews, was open as it was already getting late for a Wednesday, and seemed like it would be fairly quick. It was located across from the northeast corner of the station, more or less diagonally through the it from the Le Meridien.

The chopsticks arrived in cloth chopstick sleeves. Fancy!

As this is a noodle restaurant, we decided to get two noodle dishes. The dan dan noodles had good flavor, though it was a bit too soupy. It would have been OK except the actual noodles were pretty terrible. They were basically a soggy mess.

We also ordered their duck with broth and egg noodles. The roasted and probably fried duck was very good, though the soup was pretty mediocre. And again, the actual noodles were terrible.

A complimentary appetizer and dessert were also provided. Overall, it was a pretty disappointing meal. It seems they can cook though, they just can’t make noodles!

Generally, we avoid anything Chinese in Europe unless there seems like there is a large Chinese presence nearby. We should have done that here but nothing else nearby seemed like it would be quick. We should have just walked a bit further to get döner, which is generally pretty reliable in our experience.

Also, its worth nothing that the area around the Hauptbahnhof is considered by some to be an unsafe, or perhaps just rough, area of Munich. Perhaps it is, but for anyone who is familiar with the major cities in the US, its fine.

It was a bit after 9:30pm when we finished our disappointing dinner. We found a bubble tea shop, Nai Cha, which is Chinese for Milk Tea, on Google Maps nearby with a 10pm closing time. We walked the equivalent of one U-Bahn stop over to the east, putting us just outside of the western edge of Munich’s Altstadt.

The shop was pretty big as it was kind of a combined space with a restaurant and store. There were many anime and related items on display.

We got a peach oolong tea and lychee oolong tea. Both were terrible with garbage artificial flavoring. It was as bad as tea drinks get. Again, a highly rated disappointment. Would the bubble tea shop in Innsbruck that we saw with the Shiba Inu logo have been any better? We’ll probably never know!

We walked back to the Le Meridian while drinking our drinks. They didn’t taste good but at least they were cold.

We received a bar voucher at the Le Meridien as a welcome gift when we checked in. We recall having the same thing during our previous stay. So, we went to the bar to trade in the voucher. The options were a drink, small plate, or gelato or sorbet. We decided on sorbet.

They were out of sorbet so we got strawberry and chocolate gelato. It was nice to have something cold given how hot it has been today, particularly given there’s very little strong air conditioning here! Sometimes, it’s way too cold in the US but that’s sure better than too hot! Sadly, this was the best food we had this evening! Not that it was very good gelato, it was a bit icy and not nearly a good as Tomaselli’s, but it was OK.

For whatever reason, our experiences in Munich have ended up being a bit negative. Its probably our least favorite large city that we’ve visited over the years. There isn’t really any big thing wrong with Munich, just that we’ve had enough small negative experiences to not really like the place. Sorry, Munich!

After returning to the Le Meridien, we started to get ready to go to sleep. And then, we saw something surprising outside.

Fireworks! They were actually a good distance away. We couldn’t see the lower part of the fireworks but did see most of the larger displays that were shot higher up in the air.

The fireworks display was part of the Summer Festival which is taking place at the Olympiapark to the north. As the name suggests, this was where the 1972 Summer Olympics took place. The tower on the right is the Olympiaturm, which is in the park.