Hello Salzburg
We were out of Oberau around 10 am as planned. It took a bit to get the kids out of bed, since they both had trouble sleeping. And, when the kids have trouble sleeping that means that Ilise has a tough night of sleep. We were able to get everything packed and in the car and started toward Salzburg, Austria, the home of Mozart and the Sound of Music! We were expecting rain all day, so when we got outside and saw the sun peaking through the clouds it was a good sign to me.
We drove for about 2 plus hours telling the GPS not to take the toll roads. Every time we get on a toll road we just see other cars. When we take the scenic routes we see so much more. So, a drive that would normally take about 2 hours took closer to 3, but it was worth it. The green rolling hills with so many different shades of green from dozens of types of trees. The lushness of the country side is just splendid. We arrived in the area near Salzburg Airport and Ilise spotted a Chinese community and a restaurant that seemed very crowded right off the road, so we decided to stop.
We ordered a number of different dishes including some soup, some fresh spring rolls, sweet and sour chicken and some lo mien. The meal was very good for a Chinese restaurant on the boarder of Germany and Austria 🙂 It turns out that our AirBnB for the evening was in Germany, about 30 minutes before Salzburg, but we couldn’t get into the apartment until after 5 pm as both Jutta and Herbert work during the day. So, we decided to head into Salzburg to take a look around. The big structure high up on a hill in the middle of Salzburg is the Hozensalzburg, a fortress that was build back in the 1400’s. It is huge and looks out over the entire city and surrounding countryside and mountains. As we most often do, we hiked up the mountain rather than taking the tram or funicular. We got to the top after meeting a family touring from India and purchased tickets to the fortress.
With the tickets came an audio tour which we all did. The tour took us to the highest point of the fortress and the views were breathtaking. We took lots of pictures and continued on our journey. With our tickets came full use of the funicular so we decided to take the tram down the mountain instead of walking. The only issue was that the tram took us to a totally different part of the town from where we parked, and I wasn’t exactly sure where we parked assuming we would come back the same way we went up. So, when we reached the bottom of the tram we started walking to the area where I thought the car might be. After about 20 minutes of walking we magically ended up where we had parked. I believe that Ilise was shocked that we found our car, but Salzburg is a pretty small city and I did take a picture of the castle sign right where we parked. Worst case I would have shown the picture to a local and they would have pointed us in the right direction.
We got in the car and started our journey back to the AirBnB we had rented for the next two nights. We didn’t have an exact street address and put in the street and started driving. It was only about 30 minutes from Salzburg and the drive was really pretty. We ended up driving up a hill to this small town and called our landlord to find out which house was theirs. It turns out we had passed their home, so we turned around and headed back. We found the house, which is very beautiful and nestled right at the bottom of the hills. We headed to dinner with our hosts and they helped us order dinner since the entire menu was only in German. Our hosts are very nice and their home is really well kept and perfectly located. We finished our dinner and then headed back to the house for some much needed sleep. All is all, it was another great day with nice weather and meeting some nice new people.
To a life well lived!
Larry Kesslin 