Day 9 to Salzburg

Day 9 to Salzburg

We started the day by packing everything up into our small suitcases and having breakfast.  The taxi-van was waiting for us at 9:30 and we loaded up to go to the train station.  We arrived at the Haptbahnhof in plenty of time and got to the benches beside the track where our train would be arriving.  When the train arrived, Sarah led us to our reserved seats and we got on our way to Salzburg.  The train seemed very quiet to me and we passed through beautiful countryside and lots of small towns.  I sat away from the other girls because our reserved seats had us riding backwards and I wanted to face the correct direction so I didn’t get motion sick.  We rode for less than two hours and we were in Salzburg.  We went out through the construction on the train station, found a taxi-van and he took us to the hotel.  I’m very glad he knew just where he was going.  It’s another city that would be difficult to drive for me and I’m very glad not to be driving here. 

We checked in and mine and Sue’s room was just fine, but the other room had not been cleaned yet. (It was cleaned by the time we returned several hours later.)  The receptionist directed us to Bob’s Special Tours for our afternoon jaunt and we stopped at a bakery on the way but ate the food at Bob’s.  We tried to cancel our next day’s private tour, thinking we could get the same tour at a much cheaper rate, but since we had waited so close to the tour we would have had to pay half of it.  Therefore we will go on a private tour with “Bob” tomorrow.  We had found out there is no real Bob, by the way.

Today’s Sound of Music Tour consisted of the five of us and a couple for Oregon.  The tour bus is smaller than our bus, I mean van.  The tour guide was a lady with a strange haircut, so look at the photos.  It looks like a 3 year old cut her hair.  Her English was pretty good but we couldn’t hear what she said all the time.  She drove us around to many sites in the city of Salzburg and explained the historical aspects of some of them and the relation to the movie The Sound of Music of the others.  We saw the New City which was started in the 1200’s, yes that’s right, and it consists of many stately homes and businesses.  We also drove around the Old City which was begun in about 700.  We even saw a ‘horse wash’ which was used on the horses before they were allowed in the barn.  Traffic was bad all the time we were in the city.  We learned all about how the movie was shot using the front of one house, the back of another house, the meadows from all around, and so forth.  We saw the gazebo where the dancing took place but it was locked to prevent accidents.  She also told us the story of the real Von Trapp family and how it compared to the story in the movie.  We left Salzburg to go into the country and we climbed mountains and went around a lot of curving, windy roads and it was a different experience for me to not be the driver.  Luckily, I fell asleep instead of getting car sick so that was a very good thing. Unfortunately there is a photo of that!!!!  There was snow on the tops of the mountains but the hillsides, valleys and mountains were all beautiful.

We went to the Lake District which contains many lakes (Are you surprised by that?) and they were very nice looking.  She said lots of scuba diving takes place here and in some of the lakes, they don’t even need artificial lights until they are at last 120 feet deep.  That’s surprising.  We drove to the church where the wedding in the movie was shot and got to go inside.  The movie made the church appear to be much larger, but it was still beautiful as was the little town in which it is located.  We also stopped at a small town on one of the lakes for some shopping (surprise).  Then we headed back to Salzburg on the autobahn at high speed.  We went to the archbishop’s palace that he built for his mistress and their 14 children to see the gardens and then she drove us back to our starting point.  She wanted us to stay in the gardens and walk back to our hotel but we insisted and she drove us back to the starting point.  She recommended a restaurant but we had a difficult time finding it, so another lady recommended another restaurant and we found this one.  It was a very good choice.  Sarah had shrimp, the others had Salzburg Schnitzel (beef in a bread covering) and I had potatoes.  Everyone really enjoyed their meals.  We also had desserts – plum strudel or apple strudel.  Needless to say, we rolled back to our hotel since we were so full.  But it was worth it. 

When we were in the mountains on the tour, we noticed how much colder it had become and we were very cold on the walk back from the restaurant but luckily it was a short walk.  We had a short meeting to discuss plans for tomorrow (Konigsee and Berchtesgaden) with the tour guide picking us up at the hotel at 9, so we will have an early breakfast at 8 or so.  Sue and I spent a LOT of time on the phone with AT&T about our data plans and our usage so far.  I had to get more text message availability, but Sue was relieved to find out that all that time she used google map to find the hotel in Munich data did not put her over the amount she had already paid for.  We were also both able to get on the wifi here in the hotel for only one Euro for five hours.  Things are looking good here.

Since it is so late tonight and we won’t have time to read and approve this blog entry until late tomorrow, I am going to just post it and hope I got most of it right.  I’ll make changes tomorrow night or some time in the future.  Pictures will also go up soon.

Nighty night!!!!