The City of Salt

Salzburg was a great weekend trip. We left on Saturday morning; a five hour train-ride through Bavaria, pretty and relaxing in itself. After walking from the Hauptbahnhof (main train station) to our hotel, we decided to ditch our bags and start exploring the Altstadt (old town). Salzburg is surprisingly similar to Heidelberg (castle overlooking a well-preserved Altstadt, scenic river and surrounding highlands). We had lunch at a small Italian cafe (Salzburg has tons of Italian influence) before walking up to an old monastary on the hill facing the old medieval castle. After watching the sunset at around 5pm we headed back to the hotel for a bit. That evening we attended a chamber concert (violin, viola, piano) at the Mirabell Palace. The palace was originally built in the 17th century by the Prince Archbishop. During the 18th century the palace burned, leaving only a marble staircase and marble chamber -- the performance was in the latter. After the concert we walked downtown and ate a traditional-inspired tapas restaurant -- quite a lot of variety on the menu and very delicious.

On Sunday we took a commerical tour up through the surrounding area to the nearby salt mines. On the way, we drove past scenic overlooks of the valley and stopped to take pictures of Eagle's Nest. We stopped in Berchtesgaden to stretch our legs on our way up to the mines. The tour of the mines was entertaining -- especially considering I've seen pictures from when we did the same tour while Dad was stationed here, but I remember nothing independent of the photographic record. The train ride into the mines and the slides to its depths were fun and the history lesson accompanying the tour provided lots of insight into Salzburg's history and importance.

Sunday afternoon we explored more of the Altstadt (baroque architecture leading to lots of very funny jokes about how everything looked "broke" -- read: Courtney rolling her eyes frequently) and toured the medieval castle. Lots of military history exhibits in the castle museum -- mostly WWI. Saturday evening we found another traditional dinner at a restaurant in the Altstadt -- Austrian food is a lot like German, but there's also a more eastern European influence (Hungarian).

On Monday morning we toured Mozart's birth house -- lots of family history and a broad-strokes portrait of his life in Salzburg. The rest of the morning was spent eating: a small cafe near the hotel for breakfast prior to Mozart, another cafe in the Altstadt for lunch before returning to Heidelberg on the train.

Off to Vienna on Thursday -- I think we'll spend most of the time exploring there, but there's potential for a riverboat trip up the Danube to Bratislava (so long as the weather and the off-season tourism industry cooperates).