Mozartland

Salzburg was a fun city. We stayed in a nice hostel in an 8 bed room with some other girls. The sheets were silky and the room clean with big lockers to use. The breakfast provided was really good with all kinds of bread, cereal, cheese, cold cuts, eggs, yogurt and this funny chocolate pear rice pudding. We spent our first night exploring and eating goulash and schnitzel then watched a little bit of the sound of music played nightly at the hostel.

The next morning we got a Salzburg card which gave us 24 he access to all of the sites around town and free bus transportation. We first took a gondola up the mountain for a beautiful view. The weather was wonderfully warm even on the snowtopped mountains. We hiked around in the snow for a while and took in the beauty then sloshed back to the gondola. Not too far away was the hellsbeunner palace with some supposed world famous trick fountains. We expected a cool watershow nut were terribly disappointed when they turned out to be silly fountains used to squirt visitors with water. We felt like we were at a kiddie show and weren't in the mood to get wet. So as soon as that was over, which was not soon enough, we headed back into town.

Salzburg houses mozarts birthplace and residence, and his face is everywhere in the city. We found his residence from when he was little and took an audioguide tour through the house. My favorite part was seeing his original piano and hearing some of the compositions from his youth composed on it. There were also pages of scores he had written and letters he had written to his family about premiers of his music. It was a very interesting visit. The mirabell werent too far so we headed over there and enjoyed the view. Salzburg is where the sound of music was set and we didnt get to see many of the places from the movie bit we did see the "do re mi steps" and the fountain.

Our last day we took a funicular up to the fortress that sits up high in the city you can see it from all around and it's one of the oldest structures there. THere wasn't much to see inside nut the grounds were interesting and we got a great view of the city. We then stopped in and saw where mozart was born then got a snack before catching our train to Vienna.

Our stay in Salzburg was packed with little sightseeing things but we also got to stroll through the shops and streets around town and even got to see a bunch of people in traditional Austrian clothing coming out of church on palm sunday which was so fun! All the families were riding bikes and playing games all dressed up in liederhosen and dresses. I'm glad we got to be a part of the Sunday celebration.