Day 4 Munich To Innsbruck Austria Wednesday 25th December 2013 Christmas Day!

This morning after a couple of hours sleep the group made our way to the dining room at 6 am for our included breakfast in the hotel.

With many of the group nursing hangovers from long night of partying from the night before!

When we finished breakfast we checked out of our hotel rooms, before taking our bags to the coach at 6:30 am.

We departed Munich at 6:45am and made our way towards Innsbruck, with the group in such a festive mood for Christmas and the added bonus of having a white Christmas and seeing snow for the first time!

As we departed Munich our Trip Manager Rebecca handed out gingerbread, while playing Christmas Songs on the coach radio!

This got us in the Christmas spirit with all of us being such a long way away from home and all our friends and families!

We travelled for an hour before we arrived at our first stop of the day.

Our first stop of the day was the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial.

The Dachau Concentration Camp was one of the first Nazi Concentration Camps opened in 1933 by Heinrich Himmler intended to hold political prisoners before being adapted to imprison Jews, German and Austrian criminals.

Walking through the memorial site was quite confronting learning about Germany’s dark history of the Third Reich and the Final Solution.

I had learned about the Holocaust when I was in high school when I studied history.

I had always known it was such a horrible crime against humanity!

Walking through the gas chambers and crematoriums made it feel so much more heartbreaking and emotional.

I could only imagine the horrors that took place here at Dachau!

Seeing what happened at Dachau will stay with me forever.

After visiting Dachau we made our way back on to the coach and made our way towards Austria.

As we made our way towards Austria,

Rebecca gave us a history lesson about Austria and our itinerary for Innsbruck:

Which included free time to wander the cobbled streets and discover some Tyrolean specialty shops in the Medieval Old Town, seeing the Golden Roof and Royal Palace before making our way to our hotel for a Christmas Dinner together before doing our Secret Santa at the hotel bar to celebrate Christmas!

We then travelled for a couple of hours,

We made a rest stop to take some photos of the Austrian Alps where we experienced seeing snow for the first time!

After we took some amazing photos of the Austrian Alps we boarded the coach and had a short drive where we arrived in Innsbruck at 2:30pm.

We got dropped off in Innsbruck Old Town for free time until the coach would come and pick us up at 5pm to take us to our hotel for the night.

I decided to explore Old Town and wander through the Christmas Markets which are super cute they are so magical here with a enormous Christmas tree lighting up the centre of Old Town!

Walking through the Old Town felt so festive with lots of traditional Austrian street food, hot drinks and cute markets!

I explored Innsbruck by wandering through the Christmas markets and found a stall with hot chocolate and apple strudel!

This stall was so cute with lots of Christmas lights and Christmas decorations!

The apple strudel and hot chocolate I bought was so delicious and warmed me up and was so festive and everything I imagined when I researched where i would be spending Christmas in Innsbruck.

As we explored Old Town during our free time the group then met up at 5pm and boarded the coach and made our way back to our hotel for the night in Innsbruck.

We arrived at our Hotel Dollinger at 5:30pm

When we arrived Rebecca checked us into our hotel rooms.

We had 90 minutes to relax and get changed for our Christmas Dinner in Innsbruck.

We made our way downstairs to the dining room for our included Christmas dinner at 7pm.

Which consisted of pork schnitzel, mashed potato and chips and apple strudel with brandy custard for dessert an amazing Christmas meal to celebrate Christmas with 52 new friends!

When we finished dinner,we made our way down to the hotel bar where we celebrated Christmas with Secret Santa.

Celebrating Christmas together made all of us feel like a big family!

Celebrating Christmas together was the perfect way to celebrate our White Christmas in a new country with new experiences.

This was such an amazing Christmas in a brand new country full of brand new experiences and something that will stay with me forever!

As we celebrated Christmas together at the bar, we then made our way back to our rooms for a good night sleep to be rested for another big day of exploring our next country Italy tomorrow.

If you have ever thought about experiencing a European Christmas I would 150% recommend it there is so much Christmas spirit and magic in the air its such a beautiful time to be in Europe!

Safe Travels!

Campbell 🙂