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Published: June 22nd 2007
because we had spent so much time with the irish boys in münchen, we got into salzburg, austria late in the evening. once we arrived, we followed rather vague directions to our hotel. after a 25 minute walk, we were there. the reception was closed for the night, but the person in charge had told us to look for our room key in the mailbox to the right of the hotel's front door. so, we were the shady girls sneaking a small, brown paper bag out of the mailbox at 10:30 pm and probably giggling about it. in any case, we got it and found our room...it was amazing...like an apartment. we were set. i think we pretty much passed out after this.
our first and only full day in salzburg, we set out to find everything important in the city. we opted not to take a sound of music tour because every tour we found cost too much, and we really just wanted to focus on the city itself. so, we walked down to the salzach river and along it to the mirabellgarten--palace gardens made world-famous by the sound of music. we wandered around and took lots of pictures of the flowers, gardens, and the fortress on the hill overlooking the city. next in line was the mönchsberg lift, an elevator that takes you to the top of a hill overlooking the city. however, when we got to the lift building, there was a sign up that said that the lift, inconveniently for us, would be closed on that day and the following day for some sort of repairs. luckily, they were still eager to take our money and hired taxis to take the lift patrons to the top of the hill. the hill was not what we were expecting. i think we wanted to see the countryside more, but we still got a good view of the city. from there we hiked some trails to the nearby (1 km away) festung höhensalzburg (fortress). when we got the the fortress, we walked up the exit ramp, exerting more energy than was necessary, and waited for a while for our audioguided tour through part of the fortress. it was pretty cool. we learned that salzburg got its name from the salt deposits in the area. exciting! after that, we got lunch and austrian beer in a biergarten and then walked down to old town. we saw mozart's birthplace and childhood residence from the outside. then we decided to take a train to the countryside to end our wonderful day. we ended up in wallersee, a lake town, sitting by the lake, making sandwiches. we people-watched and came to the conclusion that austrians aren't as modest as most americans are. when we got home, we thought we'd try some real austrian schnapps. as it turns out, the schnapps was on sale for a reason--this was not a good time to be frugal. we threw it away.
the next day we set off for an adventure in switzerland. we left austria glad that we had gone. it was beautiful, but the people were not as friendly as we had seen elsewhere. the food was good, and the beer was better, but i'll never drink schnapps again. danke, österreich!
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Mommie/Mrs. D
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High on a Hill . . .
Great account, Megg! Hey! In Salzburg, when you were "high on a hill," did you see "a lonely goatherd"? Hee-hee! A little of "Sound of Music" humor! It's really fun to read about your adventures! We miss you! And we love you! : )