How to Take a Day Trip from Munich to Innsbruck

One of the best things about traveling is the opportunity to see a bunch of different places, which is part of the reason I like day trips so much – especially when visiting cities with robust train systems.

Innsbruck is easily one of my top three favorite European day trips of all time. It’s no secret that Austria is absolutely gorgeous, but for some reason, the Austrian Alps didn’t have the allure to me that the Swiss or French Alps did.

I can admit when I’m wrong.

In the middle of my 2017 Western Europe backpacking trip, my friend met up with me to explore a few countries and check out Oktoberfest. While I was lucky enough to spend nearly two months in Europe, my friend was only joining me for about a week and a half, and she is one to make the most of her travels. We had a few days in Munich with only one committed to Oktoberfest, so she looked up day trips and discovered Innsbruck.

While we knew it would make a good day trip, we didn’t know exactly what to do there. Luckily, I had a friend who spent a substantial amount of time in Austria and gave me some good tips.

Getting from Munich to Austria was a mostly painless experience. There is a bus that goes directly from Munich to Austria in 2-3 hours for about $20 USD round-trip. I took several buses and trains around Europe, and this bus was the only one where we had officials board our bus and check our passports. Because Western Europe is mostly in the Schengen Zone, you do not have to go through a border crossing and have your passports checked between countries. Therefore, officials do not typically board your bus/train – in my experience – when going between countries.

In this case, the men came on board, looked at everyone’s passports and allowed the bus to continue onwards. As I said, a painless experience, but having your passport scrutinized at any time in a foreign country is slightly nerve-wracking.

Once you get off the bus in Innsbruck, the views all around you are absolutely breathtaking. The Alps are one of the most gorgeous mountain ranges I have personally seen, and the Austrian Alps are my favorite section. Additionally, the architecture in Innsbruck is quaint, and you almost feel like you were transported back in time with an incredible backdrop of the mountains.

Our biggest priority in Innsbruck was getting up into the Alps, and my friend had advised me to check out Hafelekarspitze. Ordinarily, I like to hike as much as possible, but given our limited time in the city, we took the Nordkette cable car up the mountain and walked the half-mile or so up to the peak. The cable car was definitely the right choice because we would have never made it up the mountain hiking without starting from Innsbruck much earlier in the morning.

We chose to walk from the bus station to the cable car station. This walk was slightly hilly, but one of my favorite parts of traveling is walking through new cities and taking in the atmosphere. I also love to walk and enjoy hills (more controversial opinions), so this was the perfect way for me to see the city.

It wasn’t too difficult to find the office to buy the cable car ticket and then our way to the cable car itself as Innsbruck is fairly small, and the bus station was right next to downtown. Make sure to purchase the tickets to the top of Innsbruck – they are a little pricey (nearly 40 Euro), but – coming from someone known as being very cheap – definitely worth it. During the cable car ride, you will be temped to stop at the ski lodge, but take it all the way up. It runs from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. (but if you need to ride down later than 5 p.m., it looked like they were not letting anyone get stuck at the top of the mountain). With the cable car, we still got gorgeous views of the Alps all the way up, but just missed out on the exercise and extra time with the fresh mountain air.

I wasn’t there to ski, so being in the Alps in mid-September was the perfect time for me. The mountains had a touch of snow, but were otherwise easy to traverse and at a comfortable temperature even at a high altitude. Additionally, while Switzerland is gorgeous and charming in its own way, my experience in the Alps in both countries made me unequivocally promote the Austrian Alps over the Swiss for anyone torn between the two countries.

After spending a couple of hours taking in all the views from Hafelekarspitze, we took the cable car back down into Innsbruck to explore the city. Exploration consisted more of basically walking around the city – one of the best ways to get a feel for any city in my opinion – and food. Innsbruck is part of the Tyrol region – a historical region of the Alps that is now made up of Northern Italy and Western Austria – so we were in search of Tyrolean food. At my friend’s recommendation, we were specifically looking for anything that endedin -knoedl as it signified Austrian dumplings. I love all dumplings.

Given our limited time in Austria, we also ate at the restaurant my friend recommended for Tyrolean food – Siftskeller. Despite being a pretty popular restaurant, we were nabbed a spot outside, which let us continue to soak in as much of Austrian culture as we could for the remaining two hours of our trip. We had an Austrian beer and several Tyrolean dishes. While the dishes were a little too cheesy for a cheese hater like myself, they were still pretty tasty, and the atmosphere was an easy 8.5/10.

Once our meal was done, we made our way back to the bus. We had an impromptu “photoshoot” here during our wait. Pictures from which I will definitely not be sharing.

Other recommendations that we did not get to experience were:

  • The Hofburg: A former Hapsburg palace currently containing five themed museum sections. It was supposedly built for Maria Theresa.
  • The Hofgarten: A protected park in the Old Town of Austria, originally laid out on the site of a river meadow by Archduke Ferdinand II.
  • Schloss Ambras: A Renaissance castle perched in the hills overlooking Innsbruck, also closely connected to Archduke Ferdinand II.
  • Swarovski Crystal Worlds Innsbruck: An experience dedicated to Swarovski crystals with the opportunity to shop.

Obviously, all those recommendations take more than a day trip, so you have to pick and choose if you only have a day. For us, the mountains and food were our priorities, and we returned to Munich absolutely gushing about our trip to Innsbruck. However, I do wish I’d spend more time in the city and in Austria as general. I hope to one day return to experience more of Innsbruck, as well as some other Austrian cities (Vienna waits for me).

Let’s just say – during my backpacking trip, I spent three full days in Switzerland to see the Alps and only took a day trip to Austria. While Switzerland has a special charm of its own, I wish it had been the other way around.