Salzburg

We decided to go to Salzburg today!  We caught the 9:12 train out of Linz. 

This train was huge!  It was a double decker train that had free wifi :)  We sat on the top floor (of course!) and had some amazing views on the countryside.

We had no idea how to buy tickets for this train and we never saw a ticket thing at the station.  The information people told us that we buy our tickets on the train.  So we did!

Pretty Austrian countryside! 

This is one of the stations we stopped at on the way.  I thought it was neat that this man was guarding the station.

Well we finally got to Salzburg!! We walked from the train station into town which wasn't very far.  The first thing we stumbled on was the church from The Sound of Music that they got married in at the end of the movie! 

This was across the street.  I'm not sure what it is but I took a picture of it anyway.  

The Sound of Music! 

Here is the inside of that church.  We didn't stay long at all because we had so many things on our agenda.  

We walked further down the street to the Mirabell Garden where they filmed the "Do Re Me" song from the Sound of Music.

This is the tunnel they ran through on "Fa- a long long way to ruuuuun" 

The children marched around the fountain on that ledge while singing the song.  

The Hohensalzburg Fortress! 

This building is the Mirabell Schloss 

Love this! 

We got VERY tired of these very large tour groups.  It was so annoying. 

Mozart's house! 

Michael is going to Mozart's house! 

This is Mozart's house after WW2 

We weren't allowed to take any pictures inside Mozart's house and I couldn't even sneak pictures because my camera shutter is so loud.  After we left his house we walked across the bridge into the old town for some sightseeing!

So apparently,  lovers write their names on a lock, put it on the gate and throw the key into the river.  LOVE this idea!! We were going to do it for ourselves but we never found a lock to buy.  Oh well.  

Crazy busy street!  We were constantly dodging people.  Not fun :( 

Mozart's birth house! It was closed when we finally had time for it so we didn't get to go inside.  

I tried to get Michael to try these on but he refused.  

This is where we ate lunch!  Ironically it's the same place I went with Jesse and Amber .  I didn't realize it until we walked up their stairs.  So we picked it twice! Hahah. 

We were starving! 

Our view during lunch! 

We were going to buy a Christmas ornament for ourselves and thought this would be a great place to go.   

But unfortunately, all they sold were really ugly egg ornaments.  They had thousands of them!!! 

Interesting "art"

They love their fountains! 

And so do we! 

Mozart is about to get run over! 

I couldn't get this one to rotate.  Oh well.  It still looks awesome! 

Looking straight up at the rotunda. 

Surround sound organ!! 

Michael is the king...

And I am the Queen! 

We thought about buying this hat for Michael's dad 

Riding the tram up to the fortress! 

It was very sunny :/ 

This is the tram we rode 

Michael lives life on the edge! 

He found a penny! 

This giant door had a smaller door inside.  I said it was the Keebler Elf door. 

After enjoying the views, we went inside the fortress and just wandered around exploring the place.  This place is huge! And very medieval. 

This is a well with an interesting system. 

Looking for a target! 

 We went inside the Marionette museum.  It was....creepy.  

This is so creepy! 

The fair maiden with her knight in shining armor! 

We stumbled on the gift shop and Michael had a lot of fun.  They had legitimate helmets that you could buy.  They were very heavy.

I love the face of the girl in the background lol 

Arrrgggg! 

This helmet was way too big for me! 

I think Michael had way too much fun with the helmet :) 

Apparently, they hid coins in the walls of the fortress so Michael decided to look for some.  

I never saw any. 

I saw these and thought we should have registered for these instead! 

Michael said he was too big for this bed. 

So this is what it must feel like to have arrows and spears flying towards you. 

We found a battle instrument exhibit!  Michael really liked this room.  

This is one of the first bass tubas ever made.  

Stocks! 

I thought this guy had an awesome mustache! 

Lots of old war stuff.  

Here's the bathroom!  It's funny how this was super modern for their day.  

Love this shot! 

We realized that we were walking up what was called the "Horse entrance" so Michael galloped.  

We were pretty "castled out" so we went back into town and hit up the souvenir stands outside.  One of them was a big pretzel stand so of course...we had to get one.

Eating the pretzel! We got the Apfel one. 

After our pretzel,  we went back to the busy pedestrian street for some shopping and whatnots.

This was inside one of the souvenir stores.  

We walked back across the bridge to take a picture with the city behind us.  We were on a lunch mission early so we didn't stop.  

Back across the bridge we go!  We thought about eating at this restaurant but we didn't really find anything on the menu that sounded appealing to us.  But I liked that they decorated their windows with pretzels!

So we walked and walked and looked forever for a place to eat dinner and either the prices were high or the food was unappealing.  We couldn't find anywhere that we wanted to eat and we were so fatigued from walking that we so desperately wanted to just sit down.  So we ate at McDonalds which was right next to us.  We thought it might be interesting because they advertise using 100% pure Austrian beef. 

Michael just loves McDonalds! 

After dinner we had a couple of hours before our train left so we were trying to decide what to do.  We were still so tired that we didn't want to walk and go see something so we decided to go back to the Mirabell Gardens and just sit and enjoy the views!  It was also interesting to watch all the tourists from all over the world come to take pictures and gawk at the statues.  We thought this family was very cute.  The little girl wanted to take a picture of her family so she did :) 

 It seems like the most enjoyable things we've experienced were things we just happened to stumble upon.  While we were sitting on a bench, we kept seeing police cars and people walk up to the same area.  Then we noticed that some of them had instruments.  They made a band! And they were going to perform for us but then they took their instruments and walked away.  At first we were very sad but then we saw them getting in a formation at the end of the garden and they marched in playing music! How random!

The Salzburg Polize Band 

We enjoyed their concert for a little bit and then had to head towards the train station.  When we got their we were looking for which platform our train was going to be but we couldn't find it anywhere.  There were lots of schedules and screens everywhere but not a one of them had our train.  We started to get pretty nervous about it so we went to ask the Information people....buuut they were already closed and gone.  At this point we didn't know what to do.  Michael went to one of the train station cafe's  and asked the waiter outside for help.  He was SO helpful!  He completely left the cafe` and walked around the train station with us a little trying to hard to help us.  He even got himself in the information area and talked to them and translated for us but they wouldn't help us because they were closed.  UGGH! So he looked on the screens with us and found another train from a different line that went through Linz and told us we were going to have to take that one if we wanted to get back.  This guy was probably one of the most helpful people I've ever met! Our train departure time had already passed so wherever the train was- we missed it.  So we had to buy a ticket for a different one.  It was beyond frustrating because it ended up costing us twice as much to get back that our original train line.

So we went to the ticket kiosk to buy our tickets and we were ONE EURO short.  The kiosk didn't accept our larger bill so we had to go into the market and buy something cheap so we could break a bill to pay for our tickets.  Michael bought some shaving cream.

An hour later than originally planned, we got on the train and went home.  We didn't leave Salzburg until about 10pm.  We were so tired.  We slept all the way back to Linz.