Salzburg, Austria

Ever since we started planning for Salzburg we have been excited for it. We were not only looking forward to the city itself, but also the surrounding area. Salzburg is a city of about 150,000 people and is situated in the northern-most tip of Austria. Parts of it are exactly what you would imagine a small Austrian city to be. There is a large portion that is just like any modern city, but the old town is quite charming. It seems to be very well preserved and, being a colder day in May, not very crowded. We liked walking around and seeing a little bit of what it could have been like to be Fraulein Maria.

Salzburg's Alstadt



Festung Hohensalzburg (Salzburg's Fortress)

Mirabellgarten - Site of the curtain dancing children (Do - a deer...)


The Fortress

So, we spent one full day checking out the Alstadt, or old city, and the other two days we headed out on day trips to some wonderful Alp-set towns. Our second day we went to Hallstatt. Hallstatt took us about two hours by train from Salzburg but about two hundred years back in time. Everything was small and very peaceful. It is situated on a lake and is said to be the oldest currently inhabited town in Europe, dating back between 8000 and 4000BC. Why is this? Because Hallstatt was formed around the oldest salt mine in the world. It still is active today. We took a tour of this mine as we went over 400m into the mountain. Awesome. With the clouds so low, whisping around the mountains, and us going deep into one, we kind of felt like Bilbo in the Misty Mountains, trying to find Gollum and steal his ring. Unlike Bilbo, we learned a bit about what it was like to work in a mine throughout different time periods and slid down a really cool wooden slide.

Hallstatt







The Salt Mines

The longest underground slide in Europe. And we rode it.

The views in Hallstatt were tremendous and the town was great, but the next day we went to Berchtesgaden, a town at the very bottom of Germany. The town of Berchtesgaden was not nearly as nice and quaint as Hallstatt. It was not nestled into a mountain overlooking a perfect lake. It does, however, have national park named after it, and for good reason. It is just minutes from Lake Konigssee where we took a terrific boat tour across. The lake was so calm and surrounded by breathtaking cliffs and glaciers. Upon reaching the other side of this lake, 45 minutes later (it was a slow ride), we walked ten minutes to another, smaller, lake that was more perfect than the last. If Konigssee was breathtaking, than this one, Obersee, was lifetaking or something like that because when we saw it we just stood for about five minutes without moving (or breathing I'm sure). It was crystal clear, turquoise blue, and calm as glass. It was just too good to be true. We hiked along this lake for about forty-five minutes before the rain drove us back, but we were quite satisfied.

Obersee Lake in Berchtesgaden National Park





We liked Austria. It was short, but it was basically all we could have hoped for from a country. It really is beautiful, at least the part we saw. Munich is next.