Salzburg

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Geo: 47.8005, 13.0444

We awoke to mist and clouds covering the Alps. On a cold, rainy Pennsylvania day, this might have sucked. But the view here was almost ... natural. We had learned from talking to some folk in these here parts that for this time of year. It is natural. Once all awake we spent a lazy lazy Monday morning just hanging at the cottage. Around 11 we decided that we wanted to see more than just misty mountains so we headed out. On the way out we stopped at the store to pick up breakfast for tomorrow. Waking up to a house with no food kind of sucks. It's not lost on me that this is the norm for way too many people in the world :-(

Visiting a grocery in story is, for the most part, like visiting one in the US. Except it's small, and you either have to bring your own bag, purchase theirs. Much like Aldi and since Aldi is a German food chain ... You see where I'm going. So we grabbed some apples, bread, cheese, water .... and BACON! Yes, I know you all know I love bacon. That's no surprise. The surprise came tomorrow. And of course, as I do with every store I step in here. Kinderuberaschung. At checkout the girl says to Tim that the water is buy one get one free. He just looked at me and even though I kind of sort of thought I knew what she said, I wasn't sure because ... well ... SQUIRREL ....... So I told her our German was not so good. She asked "english?" "Ja" ... and that was that.

I was a little surprised here. Everywhere we go, it's like we have a big neon red, white, and blue Uncle Sam hat that plays patriotic marching band music ..... and I even purposely left my America F*** YEA! hat at home.

So we load the car with tomorrow morning's fare and head to Salzburg. I haven't driven in Europe in over 20 years, so there was some minor getting used to it going on here. The fact that it was raining and we were in the mountains didn't help. The Autobahn from Filzmoos to Salzburg is not bad though. Not bad at all. The tunnels were actually pretty awesome. We could seriously learn a thing or two from German\Austrian engineering. Tall, wide, white running lights on the left. Red running lights on the right. Anytime there's a slowdown ahead the aforementioned running lights blink. pretty impressed.

So we get into Salzburg and park in the Haupbahnhof lot under the station. We had to find the place to pick up our "Salzburg Card." which was slightly challenging. The Salzburg Card affords us unlimited travel on several of the bus lines, and entry into numerous places of interest. If we could find the damn office. After about a half hour of wandering in circles, I finally asked the guy in the Information office, using bad broken German, where this place was. Wouldn't you know it was right next door. Help if you read the signs. especially when that one was in English.

With Salzburg Card in hand, we all stopped at the little restaurant next to the train station, grabbed a beer (of course) and some lunch. I ordered the Salzburg Chicken which made me joke about the lack of Pigeons where we were. It was, however, fantastic! All the food here is awesome. We haven't had a bad meal yet.

Once we has successfully completed our beers and deciphering the bus schedule, we headed into the old part of Salzburg. This is a beautiful town. It was still grey and misty but that didn't deter us from being where we were and seeing the things we were seeing. Everytime it would start to rain, we'd duck inside another little shop. after mulling around for about an hour we decided to head to the Mozart's birth house museum. It was interesting, however because of the rain and humidity, it was really hot and muggy inside. Oddly enough, I learned all kinds of the Mozart story from the exhibits with the fans right by them.

After the Mozart museum, we walked to to the Hohensalzburg Castle. Hohensalzburg Castle sits atop the Festungsberg right in the city. If you'd like a nice little history, the almighty Wikipedia can help:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hohensalzburg_Castle

After spending a decent amount of time touring the castle, we decided to stop and grab a beer at the castle bar\restaurant. Well ... We know how that goes. Several beers and much laughter later, we were ready to jump on the FestungsBahn Funicular back into town. We walked to the bus stop, hopped on the bus and were headed back to grab the car and head back to Filzmoos. Long day. Lots of walking. Great day. Lots of fun.

Aside from taking a wrong turn and Elsa (Elsa is ot GPS) taking us through all sorts of crazy back streets to get us back on the 155 out of town .... the drive back from Salzburg to Filzmoos was uneventful. The rain was getting a little tiring but what can one do? As we were starved by the time we got back, we stopped at the Happy Filzmoos for dinner around 9 pm. After that ... Our night ended.

Our first full day in Austria was a grand success. This is a great trip.

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