Salzburg - The hills are alive....

...with the sound of raindrops! You could probably hear the grass and trees soaking it up if you listened close enough. We may not like it much, but it is just what the whole area needs, so we can put up with a rainy day here and there.

Our drive to Salzburg was rather uneventful. Once we picked up the car and got out to the Autobahn, it was a nice, smooth ride at about 130 km/h for most of the way. The driving discipline here, staying to the right except to pass, keeps the traffic moving very nicely, even through construction zones.

The drive was just over 300 km, and we hit the change in the weather about 100 km outside of Salzburg, where a brief rain shower lowered the temperature from 22C to 16C. And as we got closer, into slightly higher elevation, the clouds got lower and lower. Not looking too good for the weekend, but what could we do. We had allowed for some cooler weather and rain in our packing so we wouldn't be scrambling around to buy long pants and sweatshirts!

Melk Abbey from the back. This is a huge monastery that
fronts onto the Danube River. We'll see it again on our cruise.

Low clouds up ahead as we near Salzburg

So we arrived in Salzburg around 2:30 and ran into the Friday afternoon rush hour traffic. We had plugged the hotel address into the GPS, and had checked out the photos on the website, but after driving past the GPS end point twice and not being any closer to finding it, we pulled off onto a side street and Monica went on foot to see if she could figure out where it was. We had been looking for a rather large Radisson Blu sign somewhere, which was our first mistake. The only Radisson sign was an 18"x36" brass plaque. Other than that, the building says 'Hotel Altstadt' in huge letters painted on the wall, as has been the custom for hundreds of years...except that they are about 30 feet up, so you can't see that from the road as you drive by the door! Almost an hour and a half after reaching downtown Salzburg, we were finally installed in the hotel with the car parked in the public garage down the street.

The front side of the hotel. At street level, there's no sign sticking
out from the wall above the archway entrance to let you know
you're there

The door to our suite. At least the headroom
is normal on the other side! So far, Larry
has managed not to knock himself out going
through!!

Bedroom, with a standard European setup - two
twin beds put together, and separate duvets.

Our sitting room

A small courtyard terrace that must be quite nice
when it isn't cool and rainy!

The lobby area

The cafe and bar. Open to the Judengasse, which is the back
entrance to the hotel in the old city.

As you can see from the photos, the hotel layout is what we can only describe as 'eccentric', only because the building was actually part of the fortification wall that was built in the late 1200s, and is now a UNESCO World Heritage site, as is much of the old city of Salzburg, so there are only certain changes that can be made to structures and facades. It is actually quite comfortable, even though you can hear every gurgle of water when someone above takes a shower, and the odd creaks and groans of the heavy wooden furniture are a little disconcerting. The big plus is that the 'back door' leads directly into the cobblestoned alleyways and squares of the old city, so it only takes a couple of minutes to reach the Salzburger Dom - the cathedral, and a few more to get to the funicular tram for the fortress.

Now, as many of you know, we met on a high school trip in March of 1975, where we visited Munich, Salzburg and Innsbruck. While we were here, we walked UP to the fortress and around the pathways, and then found the funicular to come back down. We thought we would finally try to get up there again 43 years later - maybe taking the funicular BOTH ways this time! - and were hoping that the weather would be clear enough to do so. We found one built-in way to make sure we got to Festung Hohensalzburg (the actual name of the fortress) - Monica had seen that they do dinner and concert events almost daily, and we booked one through the hotel for Saturday evening. We just had to keep our fingers crossed that the clouds would stay high enough for us to see something!!

In the meantime, since it had taken so long for us to get to the hotel on Friday, we didn't feel much like finding a restaurant, and the hotel restaurant was highly recommended, so we ate there. And we were not disappointed! Larry ordered Tafelspitz, which is an Austrian specialty of boiled beef served with vegetables, potatoes and a horseradish sauce, and Monica had Zander, a pike perch fish local to Europe, pan fried and served with lentils.

Larry and Tafelspitz

Monica and Zander

And for dessert, we had to finally get those Salzburger Nockerln!! We described the Viennese ones in the last post; these are completely different. We were already familiar with them, having had them on Crystal a few times, and they certainly lived up to our expectations.

They may look like meringues, but they are nowhere near as stiff or as sweet. They're like eating a vanilla cloud with a little whipped cream and raspberry sauce on the side. Definitely not the last time we have these on this trip!!

Saturday morning dawned the way Friday evening ended - with drizzly rain. Not heavy enough to get soaked, but just annoying enough to need an umbrella or rain jacket. We wandered about town, checking out the Dom and St. Peter's Abbey Church, the famous cemetery outside St. Peter's where 'The Sound of Music' cemetery scene was shot, with the family hiding behind the huge monuments. It is really hard to reconcile the two versions - the real one is rather peaceful and pretty, and looks nothing like what they did for the movie. It's amazing how well they used those special effects in 1965!

The interior of the Salzburg Dom

The inside of St. Peter's Abbey Church

It was quite a dreary day; the horses probably didn't want to be out in it
either, despite their raincoats!

The St. Peter's Cemetery. There are the large headstones
under the arches - these are what they used in the movie. Looks
a lot nicer in real life!

St. Peter's Abbey Church belltower, with Hohensalzburg
looking down

The view from across the river

There will be more outside photos later in somewhat better weather!

Our evening was to begin with dinner at the Panorama Restaurant in the fortress and continue with the concert by a chamber orchestra in the Golden Hall, so we headed, umbrella in hand, to the funicular. The restaurant is very nice and the food excellent. It was a set menu of soup, veal loin in a cognac sauce with gratin potato and vegetables, and a 'Mozart' dessert:

Mozart cake, meant to duplicate the flavours of the Mozartkugel, the round
chocolates that are famous in Salzburg. This had chocolate cake, light chocolate
 buttercream and pistachio flavoured marzipan on top.
It was served with Amarena cherry ice cream.

It is easy to see why it is called the Panorama Restaurant. The views are lovely, and would be even nicer on a clear day. We could even see 'Captain von Trapp's house' from up there! We did manage to get a couple of nice photos before we went in, and up, to the concert.

The mist was still low on the hills as we were eating dinner.

The view over Salzburg as the sun (as much as there was) disappeared.

Looking in the other direction - we still aren't sure how high that
cloud-covered hill really is!

We weren't sure where the Golden Hall was, and it turned out to be right in the top level of the building, a mere 141 stairs up from the outside terrace! The room is beautiful but obviously very old, if the wood and the painted coats of arms on the walls are anything to go by. It was actually installed around 1500 as a state room and has been maintained ever since. The floor has been clad with plywood to protect it from the many concertgoers, but that doesn't detract from it at all.

Looking out over the city and the river

The orchestra stage. We weren't allowed to take photos
during the performance, unfortunately

The concert was lovely; the orchestra played a few pieces by Mozart, then moved on to Dvorak and Strauss (the Strauss Kaiserwalz that most everyone knows, to make sure everybody was still awake!). After an hour and a half of listening to such beautiful music in an exalted setting, it was easy to imagine what it must have been like to be part of the aristocracy in the 18th and 19th centuries.

This morning gave us some better weather, and we thought we'd get out before it could change back. Right after breakfast we headed for the funicular and got up to the Fortress while the sun was still shining.

View from the funicular as we rose to the fortress

The Chapel of Archbishop Leonard von Keutschach

One of the towers and some of the 141 stairs
we climbed up and down, in the dark and in the rain (!!) to the Golden Hall
for the concert

After that, since we had found Nonnenberg Abbey so close by, we had to check it out - and discovered there were 160 steps to climb from the old town to reach it. Since that's what all those squats and step-ups at the gym are for, we did actually manage it with reasonable breath left! So, since we're here anyway, let's get a few things out of order, and present the 'Sound of Music' portion of our tour! Here are all the places we found that are related to the movie, other than the cemetery. Of course, you can always take a themed tour of Salzburg to get close up to some of them, but we didn't want that level of immersion...

Schloss Leopoldskron, or Captain von Trapp's house, complete
with the small lake out back!

Nonnenberg Abbey - still a working priory

THE Gate: used numerous times in the movie. Maybe
those same bike were standing there all those years ago?

The inside of the abbey church. Almost every corner of
this church looks familiar

The Performance Halls, the largest of which, the Rock Riding School,
was used as the venue for the Singing Contest

Schloss Mirabelle, where some part of Do-Re-Mi was shot
around this fountain

The fountain in the Residenzplatz, where Maria
walked through singing 'I Have Confidence'

One thing we did decide is Maria, Mother Superior and the rest must have been marathon runners!! One, there are no hills, Alive with Music or otherwise, within at least a mile of the Abbey, so the run from the hills in the opening scene to the Abbey was a LONG one!; and Two, the Cemetery where Mother Superior hid the Von Trapps is down those 160 steps AND on the other side of town!

In between the Sound of Music sites, we came across a few more points of interest, or at least really nice photo ops, and had to stop for a quick refreshment along the way:

Residenzplatz again, with happier horses!

The front of the Dom

We took a break before heading across the river to
Schloss Mirabelle. How's that for a coffee??
Eiskaffee - coffee, ice cream and whipped
cream. Is there a better combination?

Mirabelle Gardens

St. Mark's Church, at the end of town, and just
around the corner from the Augustine Brewery. Those
Augustine monks invented beer in this part of the world, as far as we can tell!

The view of old Salzburg from further down the river on one of
the footbridges.

That took us through all of our 10,000 steps, plus some. So after a bit of a rest at the hotel, we thought we'd have an early dinner, and set out to find a nice local spot. We had passed a few on our walk, and went back to one of them to check out their specials. This place is called Zwettler's, and has probably been around for quite a number of years - it has that atmosphere about it, and when the regulars came in you could see that they had a good relationship with the staff. There were quite a few visitors there, too!

Inside at Zwettler's

Larry had a fried potato, onion and bacon combo with
a fried egg and cabbage salad

Monica chose beef in onion sauce with
potato croquettes

Larry's Apfelstrudel

This is called Palatschinken - crepes spread with
apricot jam and rolled up.

So we're back at the hotel, getting the blog updated and our things packed up for the drive to Garmisch-Partenkirchen tomorrow. Should be fantastic views along the Alpenstrasse!