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Published: July 24th 2006
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Punting
This is actually from last week in Oxford. It is quite amusing (and afternoon's entertainment) to sit on the side of the river and watch all the people crash into each other. Asian tourist in particular seemed to have problems, as can be seen in this picture... This past weekend I traveled to Salzburg, Austria. For those of you who haven't heard of that place before... it is known as the Home of Mozart and The Sound of Music. As far as scenery goes, it is absolutely beautiful- I really enjoyed it! (I will try and put some variety in the words I use so that they aren't all "beautiful," "gorgeous," "pretty," and "amazing," but it will be hard!!)
We arrived in Salzburg late Friday night and found our hotel to be much better than we were expecting- if anyone ever goes to Salzburg, I would definitely recommend staying at the Bergland Hotel. It is family run and is about a 10 minute walk from the river/city center. That was really nice because we were there at the beginning of the week-long Mozart Festival, and so at night along the river it gets really busy, and I would imagine could be loud if you have a hotel right on the river...
Saturday we got up early and took a boat ride down the river to Hellbrunn Palace and its "Trick Fountains." Now...it did briefly cross my mind to wonder "why are they called trick fountains?" but
Warning Drop
You cant tell how far the drop is in this picture, but at Stansted Airport they have warning signs for those people (like Nate) who can't seem to see that it is at LEAST a 15 foot drop to the ground... I was amused. I was definitely not prepared for what they were! Basically, this entire castle had been built by a tricky Prince who liked to have parties. During these parties, he took great pleasure in soaking his guests when they least expected it.
There were 3 main water tricks: The banquet table (outside) had holes in the bottoms of all the seats. Water would spray (in a farily hard stream) straight up and soak the person, while water sprayed from the sides as well. All seats expect the one at the head of the table were thoroughly soaked by the end. Two other rooms were there throughout the gardens as well. Both of them lured us in (we were in a tour group) and then once you were in you were basically trapped- water could come from anywhere...the floor, the ceiling, the corners, a REINDEER (see pictures), bushes...anywhere! The best part was that you could never see where it was going to come from because all the water heads were hidden! It was a lot of fun 😊
We then took the boat ride back down the river and walked along a bunch of the home-made shops that were lining
Bergland Hotel
The room was really cute- all throughout the hotel the decorations were very nice! the river for the festival, and ate 2 pretzels (a regular one and a pizza one.) We then got ready for dinner, and headed up to the Fortress for dinner and a concert.
Before we ate, we toured the Fortress and got to see from the very top- it was quite the view! Dinner was a DELICIOUS 4 course meal. I posted pictures of 2 of the pretty courses...but they were all really good, and we (well, I did because I was facing the window. Nate was just facing me. tehe) had a really good view of the sunsetting over Salzburg. After dinner we headed to our outside concert (in one of the courtyards of the Fortress.) The weather could not have been better- it wasn't hot at all, but just had a slight breeze. The Mozart concert was really cool- and each song had a different type of sound to it, such as just strings, a singer, French Horn, and one of those long Alp horns (I dont remember the name, but they are about 20 feet long and sound/look really cool!)
Sunday we went to the Steigalt Brewery which is supposed to be the largest Adventure
River-side shops
Sorry if the picture is blurry, but you can see the long line of shops around the river. They were fun to look around, and had everything from food to glass to ceramics to jewelry. Brewery in Europe (or something like that.) We got to learn how was beer was made, and then with admission (see my little note later about the cost!) we got 2 beers, a pretzel, and a gift (a nice beer cup, heh). I didn't want 2 beers though, so my second one I got a Austrian soda, and it was really good/different- I can't explain it.
Next we took the Unterberg cable car up to the top of the closet mountain (about 8,000 feet) and from there had a view like none other. Unfortunately none of my pictures do it justice...so I'm not posting any from there. I think Nate has some cool ones up from it though! Just know that it was beautiful!!
After that we headed back down the mountain and hurried to 5 PM mass. We had seen an English mass posted at a church, so we went there and it was in a cute little church with about 15 people and a visiting priest from Hong Kong- it was beautiful! We just had a piano for music, and no singer, but everyone just sang really loud and we sang neat songs and stuff...
Reindeer
I was almost caught by this water because I had been standing in front to take a picture of the funny looking reindeer with its tongue sticking out...luckily I moved with speed and grace and avoided the water! Finally we began walking back to the hotel where we had left our bags for the day, and then were headed to the airport. On the way we stopped at a little Greek restaurant and ate dinner- I had this really good cheesey/veggie bake!
Finally (again) I have to tell you about this precious little thing called "The Salzburg Card." It cost us €29 to buy one, but then it gave us free admission to a whole bunch of things (well, basically everything we did) in Salzburg. So *insert drumroll here* our total used on the card was €65!! Yay for saving money!
We finally got back to Oxford around 3 Am...but it was well worth being tired on Monday for the weekend- I absolutely loved Salzburg, if you hadn't caught that yet!!
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Joe
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Salad
There was one thing wrong with that salad, where was all the meat?