Salzburg

Wednesday

We arrived in Salzburg after a one hour train trip from Munich. After dropping our bags at the hostel we head for (surprise!) the Christmas markets. Much like the markets from Ulm or Munich these have Christmas gifts and decorations with food and mulled wine. Here we find dinner of corn on a cob, baked potato and Gluhwein.

Thursday

Waking up in Salzburg. The breakfast for the hostel is quite good - standard fare of cereal, bread, jam, ham, egg, cheese and coffee. There is a frost outside, and in the daylight we can look at the view from the hostel, which is the Fortung Hohensalzburg perched on the cliffs. Today we have booked a tour for the Sound of Music film sites.

For the afternoon we look through the Mozart museum. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born and lived in Salzburg. The museum is interesting, but doesn't get many points for coherency in the presentation.

Salzburg is nestled in between two cliffs, the Monchsburg and Kapuzinberg. At dusk we ascend the Kapuzinberg cliffs to get a good view of the city. We go back to the old town and peek inside the cathedral. For dinner we have a quick, but good curry meal, no frills and cheap. By accident we stumble across two stores, Easter in Salzburg and Christmas in Salzburg. They sell painted eggs and Christmas baubles of all kinds.

Tonight we spend some time planning the next few days. Once again the Sound of Music movie is on at 8pm, and we are sitting in the common room of the hostel planning our trip, but half watching the movie. Now that we have the inside information and have visited the movies sites the movie takes on a different appearance.

Friday

Another glorious day in Salzburg. Today the plan is to ascend the cliff on the other side of Salzburg, the one with the fortress and abbey. 144 stairs and halfway up the Monchsburg cliffs is the abbey that was used in the filming of the Sound of Music. It is also in its own right a very nice chapel. The haze has lifted a bit today and we are offered great views of the mountains around Salzburg.

From the abbey it is a steep walk up to the fortress. The fortress was not set out as a normal castle re-creation, it is mostly a museum. The views from the ramparts were stunning. The fortress is well known for being impenetrable, it has never been taken by force in all of its time.

After the castle we walked along the ridge that castle is on where we found a nice cafe for lunch - beer, hot chocolate, pork schnitzel and views. Down the other side of the ridge is the Augustiner beer hall. This beer hall brews its own beers and serves them in stone mugs. We nip in of course for a quick one before wandering back through the old town for dinner.

Our original plan was to only be in Salzburg for two nights, but we loved the city so much that we decided to stay for a third. Unfortunately the room we had was booked and we had to move to a shared dorm. For travellers like us this made for quite an experience.

Saturday

Our night in a shared dorm in Salzburg. There were a couple of guys that could really snore. It was not much fun having to be quiet when moving around the room.

Today we leave Salzburg, which is a city that we really enjoyed. The scenery is just so beautiful and the town is peaceful and easy to get around. We pick up a car today to drive from Salzburg to Vienna.

Click on the photo to see more of Salzburg

Salzburg