When we woke up on Sunday the 27th, we were greeted by a spectacular breakfast! There were fruits, vegetables, eggs, pastries, cheeses (even brie, yum!), yogurt, granola, something like five different kinds of meat... the people at Hotel Gabi were just freakin' awesome, that's all there is to it. After we finished stuffing ourselves, we took taxis (brand new Mercedes taxis, it was weird...) into the city and started off our day in Salzburg! We began by walking through the gardens around Mirabell Palace—which we didn't really know anything about...—and we were certainly impressed. There were all kinds of flowers, plant sculptures, a vine-tunnel, a labyrinth, and plenty of statues and fountains. Overlooking the gardens from the top of a small mountain in the distance was Hohensalzburg Castle, another place we knew absolutely nothing about. We started heading towards it, and before long we came across the Salzach River, where there was a huge flea-market-like thing with stands all along the bank. We found some pretty cool stuff there, much of which you couldn't get anywhere else. There was locally made tea and curry powder, handmade jewelry from a Spanish/Chilean couple, and various other arts and crafts. We shopped around for a pretty good while before heading to lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant nearby. It was my first time trying Vietnamese food, and I can't say I was entirely enthusiastic about it, but I think I just picked a bad dish and/or restaurant! To top it off, when I paid I thought they shorted me a lot of money, so I went back inside and told them, at which point I realized they only shorted me 1 euro. I felt like such a cheapskate... Oh well, I will never see them again, ha! After lunch we found a couple of cool churches, one baroque and one gothic. We were excited to finally see a gothic church, since most of the ones we had come across had been baroque. But it was kind of funny because the gothic church had actually been partially "remodeled" with baroque elements. There was just no escaping all that ornamentation!! Our church-watching was pretty cool; we even stumbled upon some ancient catacombs at St. Blasius Kirche! After that we finally made our way up to Hohensalzburg Castle, where we found that the entrance fee was too high for us... It was worth the trip up though, because the views, both of the city and the architecture, were incredible! We stayed up there for a while before heading back down to the downtown area, where we found some pretty cool stuff! First we found Mozart's birthplace, and then his residence, where we took a tour of the museum inside. It was a great display, featuring replicas of Mozart's instruments, scores, letters, all kinds of things. It was amazing to walk through the place where such a brilliant musician spent so much of his life! After the museum we found a cool shop with salt products from the Salzburg salt mines ("salz" means "salt" in German; Salzburg is named after its mining industry!), and we shopped around before heading to a local biergarten for dinner. The food and beer was delicious and made for a great conclusion to our stay in Salzburg; it wasn't long before we had to catch a train back to Wien!
PHOTO UPDATE:
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| I never got tired of Austrian breakfast, and Hotel Gabi's was especially good. |
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| Mirabell gardens, Hohensalzburg Castle in the background. |
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| I loved the gardens! |
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| Salzach River. You can see the market extending down the left bank! |
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| Beautiful church! |
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| Inside the church. |
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| Inside another church, this time gothic. |
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| One of the cooler street performers. |
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| Mozart's hometown. |
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| View from the castle! |
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| Beautiful cemetery outside the catacombs. |
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| Catacombs from the outside. |
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| Inside the catacombs. Kind of spooky. |
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| Mozart's birthplace. |
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| Mozart's family residence. |
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| One last look at the Salzach! |
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