Salzburg
Although we had planned on going to Salzburg tomorrow, the weather said it would be a nicer day today so we made the trip today instead. It took about an hour to drive over to Salzburg, and this was our first trip into Austria! I was excited to see all the Sound of Music sites, and to visit the beautiful city. We tried following my GPS, and it took us up a road that was definitely a one-car road and not made for vans! It was a tight squeeze, but we made it through the street. We parked in a lot for the day and made our way to the fortress Hohensalzburg. We had planned on taking the funicular up to the fortress, but again GPS took me right to the fortress instead of the funicular stop so we ended up walking all the way up there. It was quite a hike up a hill and lots of stairs, but we saw some beautiful views.
The fortress was pretty cool. The outside gave us great views of the city, and the kids liked seeing the cannons and cannonballs.
The inside of the fortress held a museum that had a lot of military history of the fortress, which Ronin loved. He asked to use my phone to take pictures, so I ended up with over 300 pictures on my camera of random exhibits (many of them blurry).
After we finished the fortress we walked down to the town. We were going to walk around the top of the hill around to the other side but wanted to try to do as much as we could before it began to rain on us. We had stopped at Aldi by the B&B and found some rain jackets (that came with pants) for myself and the kids, and the B&B owner let us borrow some umbrellas, so we were at least better prepared for the weather than yesterday. Anyway, we first walked through Kapitelplatz, which had a big gold ball with a statue of a person standing on top of it. Ronin really thought this was cool. Here we also bought some giant pretzels—one cinnamon sugar, one almond hazelnut chocolate, and one cheese. We all liked the cinnamon sugar one best (except Willow, who only liked the chocolate one), although it tasted more like a doughnut than a pretzel.
We then went into the Salzburg Cathedral, which had beautiful carved ceilings. The catacombs had a really weird shadow display where freaky metal characters were lit by candles and made shadows on the wall.
Next we went to St. Peter’s Abby and into the church. This was another white and gold church, and as we were getting ready to leave someone started playing to the organ, so we sat down to listen to the organ music. There was a flower statue outside the Abby and of course the kids wanted a picture.
Right by the Abby is the cemetery, which had big metal gates that contained the crypts (hint: Sound of Music!). Each grave had a garden atop, which made the cemetery very beautiful. There are still people being buried here, and almost all of the markers had multiple names and dates on them across the last few hundred years.
Our walk next took us past Kollegienkirche, an all-white church that was pretty. There was an art exhibit going on which was a little weird, but the church itself was nice.
We walked through the University Square, where we got more giant pretzels. These made good snacks. This time we got apple strudel, pizza, and another cinnamon sugar. This time we were split with half of us liking the apple strudel best and half liking either pizza or cinnamon sugar.
From here we walked to Getreidegrasse, a fancy street with lots of shops and beautiful signs for each shop. Do you see the McDonalds sign?!?
On Getreidegrazze is Mozart’s birthplace, and of course we needed a picture. There is a museum here but the only ones who would have probably liked it would be my mom and me, so we skipped this and just saw the building from the outside.
We walked across the bridge to the Mirabell gardens (another Sound of Music spot) and everyone enjoyed walking through the gardens. On the way there, there was a small hill with a groove in it for a small stream and some plastic balls, and you took the balls to the top of the hill and they rode a zigzag pattern down the hill. The kids loved this and we let them ride the balls down several times.
Walking back to the car we went through Mozertplatz and Residenzplaz, seeing colorful houses, statues and fountains, and the glockenspiel. We even got a great picture of the fortress as we were heading back home. It sprinkled a little today and was a bit cold, but we were able to see everything we could in one day in Salzburg.
