So we took an overnight train on Thursday night to Munich, where we had an 11 minute layover before we had to catch our train to Salzburg. Our train was actually late, so we thought we were going to miss our next train, but that train ended up being late too, so we made it right before it left. We got to Salzburg around 10am, found our hostel, dropped off our stuff in a locker, and had breakfast. The receptionist told us about the Salzburg Card, which you can buy and then get into a bunch of different attractions for free. We decided to get the 48 hour card for 30 euro, so we walked to the city center to go buy that. On the way we found a euro+ store and bought some silly souvenirs and stuff (including a big American flag for 4 euros). We got our card and went across the street to the Salzburg Museum to start getting some use out of it. They had some pretty neat stuff, but after going to so many museums this semester we've really stopped reading about anything, so we get through them pretty quickly.
After that we found a cemetery, and one of the first graves we saw was Mozart's daughter-in-law I believe. I think the other two plaques are for Mozart's parents, but I'm not sure. Here's the grave -
After the cemetery we walked back to the hostel to shower (we couldn't actually check in and get into our rooms until noon). The Salzburg Card covered a 40-minute cruise down the river, so we went to that at 2pm. They just started doing the cruises again that day, April 1st, because they close it down in the winter, so we were really lucky with that. On the way to the cruise, we walked through Mirabell Palace and Gardens (which we ended up walking through about 6 or 7 times over the weekend), which was gorgeous.
It was actually prettier the next day, when it was sunnier. Then we went on the cruise, which was pretty fun. There was a big group with us who all got pirate bandannas for some reason. And there was a pirate hat and treasure chest.
After the cruise we went to the Stiegl Brewery. The museum was alright, the beginning had a lot of the same stuff I had already seen in the one at Guinness in Dublin though. Then we got to go to the beer hall and try three different types of Stiegl beer, so we did that and got frankfurters for dinner. We even got a free gift, a little Stiegl glass.
Then we were planning on seeing the end of a concert that was going on by the Mirabell gardens, but apparently you couldn't go in after it had already started, so we missed that. And we tried to go to the zoo, fell asleep on the bus, missed our stop and rode it to the end of the line. By the time we finally got to the zoo at 7pm, it had been closed since 5. We played with some goats that were outside while we waited for a bus back.
After that we went back to the hostel for happy hour, where we met a big group of Americans who were also studying abroad and we hung out with them all night. We mostly just stayed at the hostel bar, then went to a club for a little while until about 1:30am.
Saturday we had a lot of stuff planned, so I woke up at 6am, showered, had breakfast, and we headed out at 8am. First we went to the Mönchsberg lift, which took us up an elevator for an incredible panoramic view of the city. We were the only ones there since we got there right when it opened.
After that we tried to go to the Toy Museum near by, but it was closed for renovations until October :(
After that we went to Mozart's Birthplace, where we stood in the actual room where he was born and saw his first violin. Then we went right across the river to Mozart's Residence, where he lived for a while, but apparently wasn't there tooo much because he traveled a lot.
Then we went to the Hohensalzburg Fortress, which if you go back to this picture -
is the castle in the very middle, on top of the big hill. You can see it pretty much throughout the city. They have cable cars that run up to it that we could have ridden for FREE with our Salzburg Card, but they were (get ready) "closed for renovations!" Ugh. So we walked all the way up, which was a major calf workout. But we made it up, did an audio tour of part of it, and then walked through some museums that were inside. Hohensalzburg is the largest fully-preserved fortress in Europe, built in 1077. The tour took us through a torture chamber (which was apparently never actually used) and to the top of a watch tower, which had another great view of the city.
One of the museums inside was a marionette museum, which was kind of interesting. It just had a bunch of marionettes with different themes, some modeled after the Sound of Music, some from a movie, etc. There was a marionette set up that we were able to play with.
At this point it was only about 1:30pm I think. Like I said, we did a TON of stuff on Saturday. So after we left the fortress, we stopped by a supermarket to get some snacks for the train ride since everything closes really early. We just carried it around for the rest of the day.
Then we took a bus over to Hellbrunn Palace and Trick Fountains. We went on the tour, but it was mostly in German and directed to little kids. We met a girl from Missouri who was studying abroad in the Netherlands; she was just traveling on her own, so we hung out with her while we were there. None of us were super into the tour, and the guide just started the trick fountains out of the blue (well he probably warned everyone in German) so we were at pretty high risk of getting soaked, so we left the tour and just walked the rest on our own. When we got to the end, we realized we were actually locked in to the tour area, and we didn't really want to just wait there since we had other stuff to do, so we hopped the fence and broke out :)
We stayed around there for a while longer and had a little picnic since it was so nice out. It was probably about 75F, and after it being cold all semester, it felt incredible. It was really pretty there too.
We still had one more place to go on Saturday: the zoo. We failed at trying to go Friday night, so we made sure to leave enough time on Saturday. And it was great! I am definitely a fan of the Salzburg Zoo. The whole time you're walking through it you can see the mountains in the distance, and it was just a nice time. We got ice cream cones and walked through, deciphering all the German animal names.
"Kapuzineraffe" aka Capuchin
"Jaguar" aka Jaguar, lol
Oh and there was a really funny looking alpaca -
So overall we did pretty much everything we were planning on doing by 5pm Saturday night. We were completely exhausted, but it was a fun day. After the zoo, we headed back the the hostel, grabbed our stuff, and went to the train station. We ended up taking an earlier train than originally planned, since the original plan only left us with a 12 minute layover in Munich. Since the train on the way to Munich was late, we didn't want to risk missing the one back, and we had plenty of time, so we left a few hours earlier and hung out in Munich for about 2 hours.
We walked around Munich for a little bit, but we were really tired of walking, so we camped out in Burger King the rest of the time. Then we took an overnight train, getting back to Metz around 6:30am Sunday morning. We had set an alarm so we wouldn't miss our stop and it didn't go off for some reason, but someone came by to tell us it was our stop. They do that sometimes but not every time, so we were very lucky they told us this time. We had to make the 35 minute walk back to Lafayette, since buses weren't running yet (Sundays in France, ugh) and there were NO taxis waiting at the train station. There are always taxis, except for the one time we actually need one.
My legs kind of feel like jello now from the insane amount of walking this weekend, but it was a good trip. It was kind of a nice change traveling with just one other person instead of a big group; we were able to get a lot more done and actually meet other people and hang out with them.
Oh so we never actually went out for any real meals in Salzburg besides breakfast both days, and a frankfurter Friday night (well we got another frankfurter Saturday night off a street vendor). We just made extra sandwiches at breakfast, brought them with us, and ate them whenever we got hungry. It was kind of nice only spending about 3 euros for food for the day. And breakfast had apple juice, which I hadn't had since I've been here, and I probably drank about 10 glasses in one morning. It was incredible.
Great weekend, Salzburg surprised me! And whoever wrote this on the hostel wall was obviously entirely wrong -
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