Day 1The train right to Salzburg went through the Alps so there was some great scenery. We arrived in Salzburg late afternoon and luckily our hotel was close to the train station so we checked in real quick and were on our way. We asked about the Sound of Music Tour (much of the movie was filmed in the area) and considered doing it the next morning, but realized it probably wasn't going to work. We did find out from the hotel clerk that we came to Salzburg on the one day of the year where the museums were all open late night and by buying one pass you had free pass among all of them. We ended up doing a whirlwind tour of some of the main sites and museums in Salzburg, along with some of the churches in Old Town. While walking from our hostel to Old Town we walked through Mirabell Gardens. This is a large park that has fountains, statues, and of course gardens. However, the main claim to fame is that it's the park where they sang the Do-Re-Mi song [Youtube Clip] (final minute is all in the garden) in the Sound of Music.
Mirabell Gardens |
Fist Bump |
Colleen in the Gardens |
The biggest other touristy place of note we went to is The Hohensalzburg Castle. We rode up another funicular to get to it, which was free because of our handy Museum Night pass. The castle had amazing views of the city, but what was really interesting to me was the random (and kind of scary) Marionette Museum, which was for some reason situated within the castle walls. We of course went, it was free after all.
View from the castle |
I dare you not to have nightmares after seeing this |
The two main things that we were interested in doing in Salzburg weren't really traditional tourist sites, however. The first (mostly being pushed by Colleen) was the Stiftskeller St. Peter Restaurant, which claims to be the oldest restaurant in the world having been operational since 803 A.D. The second thing was a famous beer garden (being pressed by Nick), the Augustiner, which is part of a Benedictine monastery founded in 1605. We decided to hit up the restaurant first and then head over to the beer garden. The restaurant was very nice. I think Colleen was into it more than me. I got a feeling it was full of a bunch of people that went there just so they can say that they went to the oldest restaurant in the world. With that, the ambiance and food was still very good. After dinner, we went over to the beer garden. That place was very cool as well. They served their beer in stone one liter mass which was a little different than the glass ones that were served in Munich. The beer itself was very good, and it is served to you straight out of giant oak barrels, which they have dozens of on the premises to make sure that they never run out.
Sipping some wine at the oldest restaurant in the world |
Drinking some beer brewed by monks |
Day 2 (Morning) We woke up in Salzburg, and before we could catch a train to Munich, we first had to check out of the hotel. That was an adventure because this was one of the few hotels we stayed at (as opposed to hostels) and we had booked using Expedia.com. Usually we assume that means it's prepaid but not in this case, and the hotel only accepted cash. Colleen went to the ATM at the train station but the one she tried didn't work. The info desk person told her that all ATMs were closed on Sunday in the entire country of Austria. We really weren't buying that story (and the hotel desk clerk laughed at us when we mentioned it to him), but we also didn't know where any other ATMs were that were very close. In the end, we found out that the hotel would take euros and U.S. dollars so we ended up cleaning out both of our wallets and by pooling all the paper currency (I think we had some Canadian, some Pounds, and some Rupees in there too) we were able to settle the hotel bill.
With that taken care of we went to the train station to catch a train. Colleen had heard about a special pass that allowed you unlimited local train travel in Salzburg and to Munich and back. I thought that was too good to be true so I asked the info desk about it and they confirmed it. Those tickets were much cheaper so we thought we were golden. Unfortunately, about 10 minutes into the train ride the ticket guy came buy, saw our special pass and then yelled at us for having the wrong tickets. Apparently, the pass only worked for local trains and this was an express train. The difference between an express and a local was 30 minutes (2 versus 2.5 hours), but we had to buy the full train fare for both of us on top of the now useless passes we had already bought. At this point, we were not loving the info desk staff as they had neglected to mention the express train caveat to the passes and believed the entire country's ATM fleet did not work every Sunday. |
