After 8 hours of traveling, we arrived in Salzburg on Saturday evening, ready to rest and happy to finally be there. We stayed in Hotel Pension Gerl. It was a great hotel, with very comfortable furnishings, an indoor pool, a small playground with an outdoor pool and good food. Imagine all this with being affordable, even with the poor exchange rate, and voila, it is the perfect place to spend a holiday.
Salzburg was filled with busy days and relaxing evenings, just as we had planned. Several evenings were filled with thunderstorms but we took advantage of this and swam or had a late dinner and just relaxed.
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Altogether we spent 6 nights in Salzburg, but only spent 4 of those days actually visiting the city. And with kids tagging along, it took us that long to see it. The first day going into town was exciting for us all. I have always wanted to see it, probably because of the influence of the Sound of Music on my life at such a young age. Finally, visiting the city of Mozart!
The parking is inside the mountain which encloses Salzburg on one side, while it faces the Salzach River on the other. We first visited the University Cathedral and then the famous Salzburger Dom. What beautiful churches! The paintings and details in the Dom were amazing. So detailed that you could stare at the ceiling far above you and still not see everything for about a week. Apparently the Dom was bombed during the war, so the paintings look extremely new and bright compared to other churches whose artworks are original to the building from the 1400s and on.
Haus der Natur was a fabulous visit on the following day. It is a history museum, come alive with great exhibits and a lovely aquarium. I think this was Nathaniel's favorite, aside from the bears in the zoo. We saw so many lovely buildings while roaming the streets, and we found the beauteous horse mural wall with a statue of a man and horse in the center of a platz. We found out that this is where the watering hole was for the horses a century ago. The murals are very well done, although aged and starting to crack and peel in many places. But from the street this is not noticeable, and it is a lovely site to behold. The kids loved the murals too and each picked out their favorites- Ariel's was the Appaloosa and Nathaniel's was the Black Stallion.
Hohensalzburg Fortress was next on our must see list. So, we purchased funicular tickets to ride almost straight up the mountainside. Are you crazy??? It was either test my mother-in-law's closterphobia for a minute or else test my sanity whilst trying to urge 2 little kids up the long hour hike to get to the top. I thought it was exciting. So did the kids.
It was rather quiet in the fortress when we arrived. We investigated a little bit, then found the war museum that is located there. That was pretty cool. Seeing Austrian historical uniforms (with feathers) and achievement medals, weapons and miscellaneous things such as musical instruments and even a chastity belt was pretty cool. The kids had fun playing on an old cannon while we looked around. There was also an orchestra room that was set up as it used to be. The room had carvings everywhere and they were painted and trimmed with real gold. They had guards walking around in these rooms to ensure no vandalism. Gold within touch is just too irristable for some people.
Salzburg was fantastic. We would love to go back and actually get some souveniors, such as a painting for my house... the rain also prevented us from making it to see the Mirabell Gardens, so that would be nice too. What a fantastic trip!
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