Day 6 - Salzburg

Sorry about the delay. Playing catch-up now...

This morning, we went on a one-hour bus tour of Salzburg. For lunch, we went to an outdoor food festival called "Bio-fest" in one of the city's main squares. It was packed with AMAZING food from local organic farmers.



We don't know what they were, but we ate these sandwiches with curry and something else. Sorry, I didn't realize how inappropriate this looked at the time:



Later in the afternoon, we went on the "Sound of Music" tour. The four-hour bus ride took us to a bunch of locations that were used in the filming of the movie. A few highlights...

The pavilion: used during "16 going on 17." It's the original pavilion, but it's been moved to a different location. It's smaller than you'd expect, because a larger one was built for the interior dancing scenes. It's also locked, because a tourist decided to dance around inside a few years ago, and broke her hip.




Mirabell Gardens: used during "Do Re Mi":







Residenzplatz Square and Fountain (the fountain is covered up and being renovated)


Mondsee Church (about a 45 minute drive outside of Salzburg): where the wedding scene was filmed, but not where it happened in real life.







Of course, we listened to the soundtrack in the bus. The ENTIRE soundtrack. And I couldn't get it out of my head for the rest of the trip.
More later...

Please Stand By...

Sorry... we've been very busy and haven't had much internet time.. I'll try to update the blog tomorrow at the airport.

Day 5 - Vienna to Salzburg

Hey.. it turns out I do have pictures of our Austrian dinner. We weren't being as fancy as I thought.
Wiener schnitzel (it's deep-fried breaded veal):

Paprika Chicken:


We left Vienna today and took a 3-hour train ride to Salzburg, where we'll stay for 4 nights.
Parting thoughts about Vienna:

1) It's a beautiful city, but there is a surprising amount of graffiti on a lot of the buildings. Some of it is cooler than others..


A reference to Lebron James?


The one building with absolutely no graffiti is the police station.

2) The public transportation system (subway, streetcars, buses) is excellent. And A LOT of people ride bikes. You can even rent them from automated bike rental stands on the street:

3) There's something very strange about computer keyboards here. Take a look:


You'd be surprised how much it screws you up when someone switches your "Y" and "Z" keys. And it took us 10 minutes to figure out how to make an "@" sign.

Oh, here's our room at in Vienna, at the K+K Maria Theresia:



The view from our window:


Before we left Vienna, we went to a grocery store to get some snacks for the train. When we checked out, they handed us a small box for free.




It was a raw egg! There was a stack of these boxes, unrefrigerated, at each of the checkout lanes. We carried it around for a while. Nat said it was like our religion project back in high school. We didn't want to throw it out, so we left it as a tip for the maid.

In Salzburg, we're staying at the Hotel Sacher, a five-star hotel on the river Salzach. I don't have time to explain how amazing it is right now...








The view from our balcony:



Ok... running out of internet time. It's very expensive here. More tomorrow...

Day 4 - Vienna (part 2)

We went to Prater Amusement park today, just so we could ride one of Vienna's landmarks- the world's oldest ferris wheel.












As you can see, Nat loved it.



It also had a merry-go-round... with actual horses.



After that, we went to see the Vienna Boys' Choir. Amazing concert! They performed songs from various composers... the second half was all Moazrt.




Here's a video clip:



For dinner, we went to an actual AUSTRIAN restaurant! Now everyone can stop complaining. It was a fancy restaurant in one of the museums. Nat had wiener schnitzel, and I had paprika chicken. They were both delicious! Sorry, no pictures... we were being fancy.

Day 4 - Vienna (part 1)

Today we woke up early and went back to Saint Stephen's. We were able to go inside, and take a VERY small elevator up to the top!














Then we took a walk through a market area... the stores had unbelievable-looking candies...






More later...