Salzburg - The End of Our Adventure!

We got in to Salzburg on the tail of our second rain of the trip (the first being a little storm outside of Prague - so fortunate!)  Our hotel was very nice, but the boys were a little cramped in thier room.  The area was also a little sketchy, being outside of a train station.  But the bathroom - oh that bathroom!  It was heavenly!  That night we just played some cards in the hotel and got Burger King for dinner (Austrian Burger King serves CURLY FRIES!)

Janos told us the next morning that many things in Salzburg might be closed, because that weekend was a holiday in Austria.  We were so lucky!  Most of the touristy things were open, but the crowds were small because everyone was in church!

We took a tram up the mountain (fun!) and got in to the beautiful Hohensalzburg Castle grounds.  What an amazing view!

 I think this was the most surreal part of the trip.  We don't have ANY mountains back home, and even driving through the Rockies was nothing like that!  We took a tour of the castle, which was informative but a bit dry.  Here's a torture wheel in a tower dungeon, though...

Husband mans the cannon...

For some reason a Marionette Museum...

Marionettes were creepy/cool.

 We got back down to the town square just in time to beat the other tourist crowds.

Pretzel time!

Giant Chess Set (Made me think of the Kids from Eureka!)

Creepiest.  Statue.  Ever.  Hiding around a corner giving people heart attacks.

Gorgeous church with an Archbishop or other Mucky-Muck speaking.

Fountain!

Lots of people wearing things like this...

Mozart was born here!

More chillin with Mozart!

 People in this area freakin LOVE Mozart.  I mean, you saw how Mozart-heavy Vienna was?  Well, he actually LIVED in Salzburg, so he is EVERYWHERE here.

Overall our time in Salzburg was pretty much perfect.  We grabbed lunch at a little pastry shop, and then it was another long bus ride back to Munich for our farewell dinner.  Many of these sights were the same ones we had already seen (and I didn't take any in Munich proper - whoops!), but we were all pretty tired and ready to go home the next morning.  This was really the trip of a lifetime!

Melk and Monsee!

 After seeing so many amazing things, it was hard to believe that there was more to come - but our drive through the Austrian countryside was a long one, and we took a few pit stops along the way...

Vineyards and Villages

City of Melk

 Melk is a Monastery with a beautiful view.  We stopped for lunch, which was extremely satisfying (I had a salad with Pumpkin Oil, which is apparently very popular as a dressing over there.  It was pretty fantastic.)

Oh, and of course Apple Strudel.  We called this trip the Father's Tour De Strudel.

Brother and the Monastery.

 After our stop we drove for quite a while more, finally getting into the scenery we were all really excited about - the Alps!

So Surreal.

 We also stopped in Monsee, which is not only a gorgeous lake with an unbeatable view, but the place where they filmed several scenes from "The Sound of Music," including the wedding.

And now we were only a little ways away from the last leg of our journey - Salzburg!

It's a Habsburg kinda day...

Moravia (the Eastern part of the Czech Republic) is very beautiful.  We also drove past Brno and was remains of the Communist Bloc.  It's interesting to speak to people who actually were alive during a Communist regime, because the feelings here are definitely mixed.  Most people seemed happy to have the degree of capitalism that they have now, but some like our tour director in Prague seemed a little sad to have free market prices for things.

Shoddily built - but so colorful!

 We made it in to Vienna by lunch, and decided to skip the afternoon excursion in order to wander around a bit by ourselves.  Vienna is a beautiful and international city on par with New York or Chicago, but it has a feel all its' own...

Lunch from a wurst cart... not sure why Husband is so grumpy here...

Businessman on a Moped...

Street Shot!

Outside St. Stephen's Cathedral

St. Stephen's is a stunning Gothic church with lots of altars, beautiful carvings, tombs, catacombs, and the best view of Vienna around.  It survived WWII when a lieutenant ignored orders to "leave nothing but rubble", only to have the roof catch fire a few years later.  Much of the artwork survived, but the roof was rebuilt with steel girders.

Husband lights a candle at St. Stephen's.

Vienna from above...

This is a silly picture...

 We decided to do a bit of shopping and wandered around the Ringstrasse, seeing all of the silly things that come with a big city...

Our personal favorite of all the street performers.

This McDonalds is fancy - and gave me ICE!!!!

Apparently this is a cool clown.

Mexican Mozart was on a smoke break.  Not sure what Husband is doing here.

We almost got drugged by some Haree Krishnas...

Just chillin on a park bench next to Mozart.

Statue outside the Hofburg...

 We wandered around the outside of the Hofburg for a little bit, taking in all of the statues and amazing architecture, and then headed back to our adorable hotel in order to get ready for our night at the symphony.

Enjoying some Wiener Schnitzel at a palace, no big.

Stage for the symphony.

 A few notable things - the violinist was very talented and playing on a Stradivarius (!).  The walls of this palace were actually inlaid with pink marble.  We shared the room with a Japanese group who kept falling asleep (hilarious!).  There were a couple of talented ballet dancers and some opera singers here as well.

I do not like opera.

A night at the Symphony... so classy.

 The next morning the Parents went to Schonbrunn Palace and Gardens (the summer residence of the Habsburgs), and we wandered around Vienna a bit more.

The stairs of the museum were painted for Klimt...

Wurst cart!

Headed to practice with my cello, y'all.

 And decided to go into the Hofburg and view the museum and royal apartments.  For those of you who aren't aware, the Hofburg was the main residence of the Habsburgs, who were a very famous and extremely powerful ruling family in Europe from 1200 to the early 1900s.  Much of the history that we learned on our trip intertwined with this family (Or Hitler, of course).  On our tour we saw all of the cutlery and dining services owned by this family...

Gilded.

 And after we went to the Sisi museum, which followed the life and death of popular Empress Elisabeth, and the way in which her life became a phenomenon postmortem.  We also saw the Royal Apartments.

Overall, our time in Vienna was great but brief.  We could have easily spent another day exploring the museums and going to see the Lipizzan Stallions (a childhood dream of mine), but we had places to be, so off to Hungary we went!