Salzburg is rightly full of pride over the accomplishments of native son, Mozart, and seems to have a slight deranged ex-girlfriend in that American stalwart, The Sound of Music. The Sound of Music was filmed on location in Salzburg in 1965, and there are bike tours, driving tours, walking tours, audio tours, you name it, all in the name of seeing the locations where the movie was filmed.
All tourists come to Salzburg for the classic Baroque architecture, the solid Austrian food, the picturesque Alpine surroundings and the Americans crowd the (many!) Sound of Music tours. I sound like a travel brochure, don't I? True confession time, it's not going to get any better. I'm running on empty.
Between Jeff and my friend Jane's travel schedules, we decided to take the train to Salzburg on Saturday morning, and back to Vienna on Sunday evening. So a quick trip, but as it turned out, given the sub-optimal weather, a fine plan. The blue sky above peeked out toward the end of our Sunday morning, so we did get to see a bit of the city in sun, but mostly it was under grey skies.
The original plan included a Sound! of! Music! biking tour, but with the chilly rain, we decided to cancel. The children were incredibly disappointed (lying), as was I (not lying). Jeff and Jane remained silent on the topic, but one can assume that they were devistated and kept a stiff upper lip so as not to upset me further. Good people, those two.
Salzburg is a beautiful city even in the rain, so no harm, no foul. The fortress you see in background is the Festung Hohensalzburg, or literally, the High Salzburg Fortress. The hill was first inhabited in 1077, with subsequent generations greatly enhancing the fortress, until we have what you can see today: one of the largest medieval fortresses in Europe.
We spent our rainy Saturday afternoon exploring the interior. I have no photos because in my deep depression, I forgot something. The camera? The chip? To charge the battery? Who can remember that far back.
On Saturday evening, in one of those weirdly fortuitous moments that make you wonder about the nature of co-incidence, it turned out that a friend of Jane's (and someone I am friends with on Facebook, so technically a "friend" of mine, although up until Salzburg more a Theoretical Friend than a Real Life Friend) was going to be in Salzburg for the evening and would love to join us all for dinner. Funny, that.
She and her husband (someone for Jeff to talk to!) are delightful people, so we all had a lovely evening, and it turns out we (Jane, the mysterious unnamed person and ma famille) are all living within a few dozen miles of each other in Pennsylvania. Itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini kind of world, don't you think? Unnamed is a horse person, and spends a fair bit of time in Salzburg, so she was happy to point out this shop to Jane and me:
A tack shop right in the Old Town! Jane and I were able to restrain ourselves, but it was difficult (technically, the shop was closed and those bars looked right tough for us to get through).
This is the Salzburg Cathedral, a Roman Catholic Baroque building located in the at Domplatz ("Cathedral Square"). It was built in 1628 and today it is one of the iconic structures of the city. We were amazed by the eye catching exterior and unique architecture of the cathedral.
HA! No, we weren't. It was spectacular but most of "we" blew by it without a second glance. That's what happens when you see too many cathedrals too young. Spoiled children.
But we stopped to say hello to these fellows. They make Tom sneeze, but Hope just loves them. They are so much more like cart horses than the more elegant horses that pull the Fiakers in Vienna.
Tomorrow: The Playgrounds of Salzburg, Because, Those We Were Amazed By
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