The internet sucks here. Its frustrating when they say they have wifi and you can’t get it anywhere. I can get it on my phone, but its so hard to type a blog post on there. So, I am just going to keep typing them in word and I’ll post them all when I get a chance.
This morning, it was raining when we got up in Vienna. We packed up all of our stuff and got to the train station. It was hard to find the right train, but we finally did and settled into a compartment. There was a man and woman in there with us and after a while we started talking. Turns out, they work for a pharmaceutical company and conduct clinical trials- very cool. She is actually trained as a pharmacist so it was fun to get to talk to her about their schools and what work is like in Europe and all of that. The conversation definitely helped pass the time. Plus, the views from the train were magnificent. This is the part of Austria where the Sound of Music was filmed. So, as you can imagine, it is gorgeous. Green rolling hills, farmland, blue skies….
We got into town and were soooo happy that the weather was nice! It was warm and sunny. We found our hostel pretty easily. It is another nice one- we are on a roll! We wanted to see the Hohensalzburg Fortress today so we started heading that way. Along the way, we stopped at the Mirabell Gardens. It is yet another perfectly laid out garden full of roses, well kept bushes, and lots of pretty flowers I don’t think I’ve ever seen before! It felt very Secret Garden-esque. Off to the side, we found a weird park with a bunch of statues of dwarfs. Apparently, at one time, a bunch of dwarfs served the family that lived at Mirabell. So, they had this garden dedicated to them and the statues were caricatures of the actual dwarfs. Weird. Then, we continued on towards the fortress and in search of food. We definitely don’t eat steady meals on our trip. Its often hard to find food or what we do find is really expensive. We usually end up skipping breakfast to get started on the day, eating a really late lunch, and then only sometimes doing dinner too. We were STARVING today by time we were walking to the fortress. I had read about a nice, but cheap restaurant in my guidebook so we were trying to find that while stopping to take pictures and peek in buildings along the way. We eventually got there, but found out it was only open for dinner. Boo. By this time, we were about to fall over from being so hungry so we just went a street over and ate there. It was delicious and had amazing views, but was SO EXPENSIVE. Oops.
After that, we hiked up to the fortress (which I decided no one could convince me to attack because I would be so dead tired by the time I got to the fortress, I wouldn’t be able to fight anyone). We didn’t realllly want to pay the 7 euros to get in after our expensive lunch, but we did. I am glad we did because it was really interesting. It is one of the largest and oldest Medieval fortresses left in Europe. It was originally built in 1077 and many people added on to it over the years. The money for it came from the salt trade (which is where Salzburg got its name from). We toured inside the torture chambers, salt cellars, palace rooms, and got to walk around all inside. It was really cool and easy to imagine living in that time. In all the time it stood, the fortress was never taken by force. It was eventually surrendered to the French under the control of Napoleon. The best part of the fortress was the view. It sits on a big hill overlooking Salzburg and the surrounding mountains. It is so beautiful and smells so fresh. If nothing else, it was worth that 7 euro just to see the views. We took about a million pictures (which I am also going to try to post today if I can get the internet to work)
After the fortress, we walked home and stopped all along the way. Eventually it started to rain pretty hard and I got soaked. Sarah has a fabulous fold-up rain jacket and I do not. I have a poncho, but didn’t want to pull it out because I felt like we were almost home and I’m pretty sure I will not be able to fold it back up enough to fit in the little pouch again. I did have my waterproof bag to cover up my purse so all was okay. We are just hanging out at the hostel now and about to go to bed. Goodnight!!
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