Salzburg
We spent the last two days exploring Salzburg and the surrounding area. We boarded the train in Innsbruck to find it filled with people traveling with (and consuming) cases and cases of beer. At first, we thought there must be some sort of Austrian holiday we didn’t know about (it seemed odd for that many people to be consuming that much beer at 10am on a Thursday outside of the US). Our search for holidays left us empty handed and it took us until we were getting off (when we noticed most of them also had camping gear) to realize that the most likely explanation was that they were going to a music festival. That time, we were correct. Apparently Salzburg hosts a famous music festival every year that happened to be this weekend.
When we got out of the train station, we were greeted with dark storm clouds threatening to drench us. Luckily, we made it to the hostel without much more than a drizzle. We agreed that didn’t want to test that luck, so we decided to stay in and get our laundry done before we checked in. When the laundry was done, we checked in, put everything in our lockers, grabbed rain coats, and set off to find lunch. At that point, it was a little late for lunch so we ended up at a Ramen restaurant (the only thing we could find that was open).
After lunch, we braved the storm and set off to explore Salzburg. We started at the Mirabell gardens which has a beautiful fountain, lots of gorgeous flowers, some cool statues, and the Do Re Mi steps from sound of music. After the garden, we continued wandering through the city and spent awhile in the old town before heading over to the Gherkin statues and then heading back over to the hostel. We got a few things organized and dried off before heading to a grocery store to grab dinner and get an early night.
Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, we did not get much sleep. People came back from the festival and made a ton of noise at 3am and then got up and made more noise around 6am. By the time we got up, we were exhausted and so our first stop was to get more coffee. With coffee in hand, we boarded a bus to Berchtesgaden, Germany which is home to the Salzbergwerk salt mines.
At the salt mines, we were provided with jumpsuits to wear and then we climbed on a mini train which took us down into the mine. After the train ride, we went down a very long and very fast slide even deeper into the mine before walking through to learn more about the salt mining process and the history of the mine. Part way through, there was another slide down to get to the mirror lake which which was incredible. We got on a boat that took us across the lake before getting on a funicular to go back up toward the higher level of the mine. At the top of the funicular, we got back on the train to exit the mine. Overall, we had a lot of fun and learned a lot about mining. Unfortunately, they don’t allow pictures in the mines, but it was really cool and they had a lot of light shows and videos throughout the tour.
Since we were in Germany, we decided to each order a different kind of sausage for lunch, one of which came with a pretzel and the other came with fries. We liked both but preferred the Bavarian sausage over the Wiener sausage and enjoyed both the pretzel and the fries. After lunch, we hiked part way up the mountain to get a view over the city and made friends with some sheep in a pasture next to the trail. The view was amazing and the sheep were adorable.
The bus ride back was surprisingly shorter than the ride there. We grabbed food at the grocery store on before spending a little time wandering old town some more (this time in the sun). Our lack of sleep was catching up to us, so we headed back to the hostel to take a quick nap before dinner. We gave ourselves another early night to try to catch up on some sleep which helped a little more this time.
This morning, we got up early and hopped on a train to Vienna. We have officially checked into the hotel and are about to go explore.
