Salzburg

This past weekend we took a trip up to Salzburg, Austria. It's about a 4 hour drive from our house and we thought it would be the perfect location for our three day weekend. It was a gorgeous drive through the mountains. The weather was beautiful on the way up there, but unfortunately it did not stay so nice! It rained all but a few hours of our time there! It was still worth the trip and still very beautiful, but hopefully next time we go back we will have better weather.

We arrived in town on Saturday afternoon and checked into our hotel which was so nice and just about a 10 minute drive outside of Salzburg. We drove into town that evening and took a quick stroll around the "old town" side of the city. The kids were pretty tired and it was pretty cold and rainy, so we headed to dinner at the Augustiner Brewery. The food was good and Chad enjoyed a nice BIG beer while we were there.

On Sunday we started off with a tour of old Salzburg. We visited the Salzburg cathedral, Mozart's statue, and St. Peter's church and cemetary. We ended our tour on the Getreidegasse road where most of the shops and retaurants are. We stopped and had a quick lunch and then headed up to the Hohensalzburg Fortress. To get up to the fortress you ride a little tram that goes pretty much straight up the side of the rock it's built on. Austin throughly enjoyed this part of the visit. Once up at the top you have a wonderful panoramic view of Salzburg. The kids really enjoyed checking out the cannons and looking down at the city from the fortress. We had been pretty lucky up until this point of the day with the weather, but this was the point at which our luck ran out. It started raining and we had to head back down to town. Before heading back to the hotel for a late afternoon nap we did have to stop and have a little treat of hot chocolate, coffee, and of course gelato! After a great nap we headed out to dinner at one of the other hotels in a nearby town and had some very tasty local food!

Salzburg Cathedral

The view from the Fortress looking out over Salzburg

On Monday Maddie and I were not feeling too great! I had a fever the night before and forgot to bring my portable pharmacy with me, so I was feeling pretty bad. Maddie just couldn't stop coughing! So, we decided to just take a drive and see if we could check out a few more sight without doing too much more walking around in the rain. We didn't get to do the Sound of Music tour this time, but I think we will try to see that another time when we go. We did drive by the Vonn Trapp mansion where they filmed a lot of the movie, but you can't really get close enough to take a picture. We then drove to a nearby German town where Hitler's Eagle's Nest is and we were going to go up and tour the famous hideout, but because of wintery conditions we were not able to do that. Probably better off because it was pretty cold up there and we weren't really prepared for that with the clothes that we brought! Maybe next time! It did make for a really nice drive through the mountain and the kids were excited to see it snowing up in the mountains high above us.

Overall it was a great trip and I am glad we went! We will definately be going back to Salzburg and hopefully next time we will have better weather and stay healthy!