13th Aug - Salzburg

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Today we packed up home, again, and decided to have a look through Innsbruck, since we were there anyway. Yip...well after the massive queue to get anywhere near the city centre we managed to make it, only to find a whole lot of boring concrete buildings, and parking buildings full, so we decided it wasn’t worth stopping for and carried on to Salzburg.
We got to Salzburg just after lunch and set up camp. The office is closed during lunch (a semi-common thing around here it seems), so we had some lunch and headed into town. Austrian’s don’t seem to like street signs (as there’s only one every 10 intersections) so it was kind-of interesting driving around. So we managed to find our way over to Hellbrunn which was the summer palace of the Archbishop Markus Sittikus built in the 17th century. This place was really cool because it has all these trick fountains throughout the grounds, using the natural springs in this area. A tour guide takes you around and then they set off all these trick fountains. The first was around an outside table. In the inner part of the table it had natural spring water flowing through to keep the wine cool, then when the visitors get to rowdy the Archbishop could turn on this fountain - where water sprays everywhere over the people, from seats etc, and everyone gets wet except for one seat - his seat! They of course demonstrated with the volunteers - all children of course! In another exhibit (my favourite) the water is used to create a village scene. There are little people moving around doing all sorts of things, and music is played in the background. The entire time you are wondering when is the water coming and where is it coming from (I found a dry place to stand as I figured it was pretty safe there). At the end of the song the water sprayed from behind where people were standing, towards the exhibit- so that got quite a few people. The last place we went into had this crown and when the tour guide turned the fountain on the crown was lifted by the force of the water up into the ceiling - really neat! When we left this room there were lovely fountains making a kind of guard of honour (where the water was squirting up and across leaving a line in the middle for you to walk through). This looked pretty tame so I walked through, but the trick in it was that at the end a fountain sprayed directly at you - which I didn’t know, so I got sprayed! Daniel managed to avoid getting wet because he waited until the tour guide left each place as she had control over the water fountains.
After the tour we were able to look in the palace and at the museum of fine arts (which we were too late to see). The best part (after the trick fountains) was getting to see the Gazebo which was used in the Sound of Music - you know the part...”I am sixteen going on seventeen tra-la-tra-la-la-la”...sing along now! I know you’re all dancing with me along the seats in the Gazebo! The filming wasn’t actually done in these gardens but the Gazebo was donated and moved there as most of the filming was done in and around Salzburg.
And that was pretty much the end of the day. We eventually made our way back to the tent, cooked dinner (yummy pasta - it’s really cheap over here for flash pasta), and went to bed.

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Photos

Hellbrunn
The table in the middle - that sprays the water.

Hellbrunn 2
The village scene

Hellbrunn 3
One of the fountains in the park