European Trip Day 21 Salzburg

Salzburg

The highlight of the trip for Barb...at least in the anticipation stakes...was definitely Salzburg. The home of one of her all-time favourite movies, “The Sound of Music”. So it was with bitter disappointment that we woke up early in Linz to see very overcast skies and an equally forbidding weather forecast. We had to ride the bus for two hours from Linz just to get to Salzburg. “Maybe it’ll fine up on the way” thought Barb hopefully.

Ha! The weather Gods are not kind. As we pulled into a rest-stop at Mondsee (about a half hour away from Salzburg) to view Dragon Mountain and a picture perfect lake, we could see that the mountain was almost entirely obscured by fog and the lake looked a dreary grey.

No matter. We could sit and eat apple strudel overlooking this diminished view. The strudel was great! We could not even get access to their deck as it was too wet and slippery, but when Barb saw the cloud cover lifting ever so slightly she dashed outside to take photos. To get out of the restaurant, they cleverly funnel you through their gift shop full of fine china and chocolates. Very tempting. We managed to see from the coach as we sailed by at high speed the church where Maria marries the Captain von Trapp. Barb is starting to get excited now.

When we reached Salzburg, and got out of the buses to meet our guides the heavens really opened with a heavy downpour. We trudged huddling under our umbrellas towards the Mirrabell Palace gardens. To lighten the mood we could hear a choir singing in the distance, and when we entered the portico leading to the gardens we found them. It was lovely! We would’ve liked to stay longer under cover listening to them, but our determined guide led us out into the rain again to admire the gardens and the fountain where Maria sang Doh Ray Me with the Von Trapp children.

This guide was something like a Kindergarten teacher. She hustled our bedraggled group along, poor Susan was struggling to keep up the pace and could never make it across the crossings in time. We were diverted from the gardens to view a house where Mozart grew up and later we also saw the house where he was born. The people of Salzburg are very proud of Mozart. So many places and things here are named after him. Including some marzipan chocolates (which would be nice IF you liked marzipan).

When we came to the lock bridge crossing the river it was a relief. The bridge is covered in thousands of lovers locks which makes it rather distinctive. There were lots of lovers (and tourists) trying to take their photos there in the rain. We were informed that this was to be our meeting point in the afternoon for the bus at 3 o’clock. Susan decided to go off on her own for a while from here rather than try to keep walking. Good move. I doubt that she would’ve kept up as we wound our way through multiple alley ways into courtyard after courtyard. I’m not even sure what we were seeing as our guides accent was so strong. I did catch at one point that we were seeing the outside of the concert hall where the Von Trapps performed near the end of the movie and make their escape. We couldn’t go in because it’s only away from the real annual song competition and people were rehearsing in there.

Finally we got to a square where you could see the castle above us and a funnicular railway to get up to see it. We would not have time to go up there, so John and I chose to go for coffee instead. Being a Sunday most of the regular shops were closed, but restaurants and tourist tatt shops were open.

We went into one of the shops to buy an umbrella after breaking the handle off one we had. Then we looked for somewhere to eat lunch. We found a delightful place accessed from street level down winding steps into a dark cavern. The walls were covered with art and the food turned out to be really good and not too expensive so we were very happy.

By the time we emerged again after lunch we found the sun had also emerged and we had a brief interlude of blue skies. We hurried back to the gardens to take some photos in the dry, but dark clouds gathered again and the skies opened with a huge downpour. We waited for the bus huddled under a bus shelter with half of the tourist population of Salzburg.