This morning we woke up in Germany for the first time on our trip feeling incredibly inspired after witnessing the Passion Play in Oberammergau last night. After a great breakfast we loaded on our buses to drive to Innsbruck, Austria. Innsbruck is most famous for having hosted several different Olympic Games in their city, but it really had a fascinating history.
We took a guide of the old part of the city where we saw the Imperial Palace that had been built by Maria Teresa with over 400 apartments inside. She built the palace to resemble the Palace in Vienna, but after all the work to build it she only used it two times. She stopped there once while on a trip going down to Italy. The second time was for her son’s wedding. The wedding was a massive celebration that turned in to one disaster after another culminating with the death of her husband. She was so grieved over his death she couldn’t ever go back to the palace because of the terrible memories.
Right next to the Palace we visited the Hofkirche (Royal Church), which is one of 49 churches in Innsbruck (47 Catholic Churches and 2 Protestant Churches). The Emperor Maximilian was buried inside the main sanctuary of the church in a beautiful tomb surrounded by 28 stunning bronze statues representing many of his family members. The Hofkirche also contains one of the five oldest organs in the world dating back to the 16th century.
After continuing our tour around the Old City we had free time for lunch and shopping (some in our group particularly enjoyed shopping at the Swarovski Crystal shop, which has its main factory in Innsbruck!). From there we loaded back on our buses to make the drive to Munich where we are spending our final night before heading home tomorrow.
It has been an incredible spiritual pilgrimage with so many special memories made and lessons learned. We can’t wait to come home to share more about our trip with you!
