Miss Hadleigh Claire Meets the Bull, Mozart, von Trapps, and Hitler

I know, you must be wondering what do these four have in common. Or you know, because you are just that good. Salzburg, enough said. This is one of my new favorite cities. We are on the final European countdown (since we plan to leave here at the end of September) and we are hitting the traveling scene hard trying to make it back to a couple favorite places and to a couple of new places before we head back to the states.

Salzburg has been on our list for a while, but we just hadn’t quite made it there, though we have driven by Salzburg quite a few times en route to other places. It is a wonderful city. Clean, cute, and just the right size, of course it helped that the sun was shining and it was in the 20s.

We stayed at a wonderfully cute B&B farmhouse right outside of town, but close enough that on Friday after we arrived we walked to the old town. Once there we wandered around a bit and then headed to a restaurant on Goldgassestr. which Rick had recommended. On our way to the restaurant we ran into Alter Markt which had been transformed into a mini World Cup stadium. There was stadium seating, picnic benches, popcorn, peanuts and beer and a huge screen where they were showing the games. We found our restaurant and had a very tasty meal over a tasty bottle of Shiraz from Australia (name the movie…”Oh Austria…good day mate, put another shrimp on the Barbie”). After dinner we wandered around the old town, and managed to figure out the bus system that got us back to our B&B.

Saturday we took our time getting up with Hadleigh and then headed into town. We ate lunch at Riedel Wine Café (the famous wine glass makers) and was that ever good. We hiked up one hillside to get a good look at the city, and then took the funicular up to the fortress. After taking the tour and walking down the mountain we decided to try to get into the Dinner and Mozart concert.

We showed up at St. Peter’s and got the last two seats in the place. They probably should have given the tickets to the people behind us since the dress was “dressy casual” and we walked in with sneakers and Dave was in a t-shirt. Ah well. The dinner was marvelous (and we even had some wine from Montepulciano, Italy) and we listened to three sets of music between each course. We listened to select pieces from The Magic Flute, Don Giovanni, and The Marriage of Figaro. The players and singers were awesome. Best part was that Hadleigh slept through the entire 4 hours. Everyone was in awe, especially since there was clapping after every piece.

Sunday we headed out to Obersalzburg and Eagle’s Nest, a house built to celebrate Hitler’s 50th birthday. We drove up the mountain to Obersalzburg and then jumped on a bus that took us even farther up the mountain, and from there we took an elevator the remaining 500 feet to the top. It was amazing!

The view was incredible. It was a clear day and we could see for miles. The view was even better than the Zugspitze (highest mountain in Germany). There was snow at the top, but it was still fairly warm. We hung out up there for a couple of hours and then headed back down to our car. We stopped for lunch at the bottom of the mountain in Bad Reichenhall and hit the road for our 5 hour ride back at 4pm.

Now, the fun begins. I’ll let Dave tell the story, but we finally made it home at 12.30am.