Salzburg
Trip Start
May 19, 2008
1
17
20
Trip End
Jul 21, 2008
Grodig,
Austrian Alps,
Austria
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Today was one of the best days in Europe yet. We had no class, and no responsibilities - so we could travel on our own in Salzburg, Austria. It was awesome.
After breakfast, and a quick planning session between the Triple A's for our day, we headed to our first destination. Mountain #1: we took a cable car up the mountain. It was a little scary to look down, and pretty far up. However, once we got up there, it was pretty spectacular. We took lots of picturesque photos between the three of us. I got to play in the snow a little, and even climb on the rocks a little. I wish I would have known about the rest of our day ahead, because I may have climbed a little less. Nonetheless, I was on top of a Mountain in the Alps, and it was awesome
We had so much to do today, so we had to leave the mountain eventually
Salzburg
. Thankfully, before we headed up the mountain, we bought a Salzburg Card that gave up admission to all of the major tourist spots in the city. It was only 24 euro and we definitely got our money's worth. We were off to town.We first tried to find lunch. It's harder than you think. We finally walked by a little stand on the side of the road, and decided to check it out. It was a little sketchy, and I think we can all say that we wish we wouldn't have eaten there. The food was ok, but our service was kind of weird. There were only two customers there at the time, and both were completely drunk at around 1 in the afternoon. Then, the cook/hostess/waitress shows up looking like a new age hippy with messy black hair held back in a headband which was worn like a sweatband... If the skull and cross bones flag decorating the "dining room" didn't give us a clue, we should have left when amber noticed some drug paraphernalia lying on the window sill. Nice. Amber swears that she was a witch. But don't fear - we suspected the bread she gave us and didn't eat it so that there was no modern-day-Hanzel-and-Gretel episode. We ate what we could and got out of there as fast as possible.
We walked around for a little bit, and soon found some kind of festival going on down some of the streets in town
view from top of the alps
. There wasn't much exciting there except food and music, but unfortunately we had already eaten...stupid us. However, we kept walking, and got to the home of Mozart. We did a quick tour of the house, which was a little disappointing. We all agreed that we were glad that we didn't pay the full admission fee to get in. So we moved on.Our next mission: find the castle. We had a map and signs, but somehow this task was a little harder than it seemed. Apparently there was more than one castle, and the castle we were looking for was not the castle that we found. Long story short, we walked about two miles on rough terrain, and 1.2 kilometers of just stairs. I am not exaggerating. We apparently started out going the wrong way and hiked up a bunch of stairs and through some woods before we realized and headed back. Then we started for another uphill route with sets of stairs - one right after the other. I didn't think I would make it, but we kept going because we thought that the Castle was coming up soon. Basically we hiked to the top of a mountain in the Alps by just taking stairs. We were tired, out of breath, and drenched with sweat by the time we got there. It was gross, but we got a work out. When we got there, we had a nice view, but the castle wasn't really a castle, so it was a little disappointing. So we left right away to find the real castle.
Ironically, you could take a funicular to the top where the real castle was
going up the mountain
. For those of you who have no idea what that is (like me, before this trip), its basically a cable car that is on tracks on a mountain. So we rode that up to the real castle and walked around. Unfortunately, when we got to the castle, we needed to take more stairs to get to the important rooms upstairs. If there is one rule that we learned today, its that Austria is a beautiful country, but you better be in good shape if you want to vacation here. We survived, and even enjoyed the scenery while we were at it. We looked around, took some great pictures, and decided to head back down. At the bottom of the hill, we opted for some dinner. The main reason we chose this place was because of the dessert that it offered. It looked like a big elephant ear topped with powdered sugar. It was awesome. Amber (who speaks german) told us that part of the name means Farmer. Since she didn't tell us what the rest of it means, we just assumed that it meant ear, and they were Farmer's Ears as opposed to Elephant's. I guess its more humane for the elephants that way. Whatever it was, it was awesome, and the entire meal was great. We got free water!! This was only the second place in our entire stay in Europe where the waiter gave us free glasses of water, and without us even asking. The other time was in Triberg. Apparently, the German-speaking countries know how to serve a meal
amber and I at the top
. After dinner, we walked around a little bit of the town. We happened upon a convent at the bottom of the hill. Unbeknownst to me, we just happened to walk into the same convent that was used to film the Sound of Music. It was the scene where the Von Trapp family hid from the Nazis. It was very cool to be able to see that in person. It looked a lot different than in the movie, but it was definitely recognizable.
For the rest of the night, we just shopped, walked, and took a bus back to our hotel in Grödig, just outside Salzburg. After we rested our legs a little bit, Amber, Amber, Nicole and I took a walk by the river. Again, Austria is beautiful. The river was a little grey, and not very healthy looking, but we had a nice walk nonetheless.
Tomorrow we get up early and head for Vienna. Back to classes.
Comments
Mountains
Awesome, Did you find out the altitude of the mountains you climbed? You could have bought some candy to bring home to your mother. Was the convent the one in the movie.... or was it the actual convent they hid in? They might be 2 different places. Glad you are having fun. We miss you.