Kiddles 'N Bits: February 16

Day 47

We arrived in Munich, Germany at 6:30am and when we arrived at the hotel, they told us we were too early to be able to check in (really?), so after a brief break, we left our luggage at the front desk and we went back to the train station to catch another train to spend the day in Salzburg, Austria.

When we arrived in Salzburg, it was snowing. Big, fat snowflakes that slowly float down and make everything wet, but very beautiful. I love snow like this. And best of all, it's not cold either. I'd take snow any day over rain, so this kind of weather is great!

Our first stop once we arrived, we went to Mirabell Garden.
Mirabell Gardens was in the movie "The Sound of Music". We had a lovely walk through there. We were surprised to find that most of the park was fenced off due to the winter weather, but we hopped the small fence and went for a walk anyways. The fact that there was a geocache there may or may not have been a big factor for us hopping the fence. Ha!

We then went for a walk, crossed a popular walking bridge and went to Old Town. We've been very surprised that a lot of bridges in Europe have locks on them. People come and leave locks that have their names on it and some have marriage dates on them too. The bridge we crossed was no exception, it had oodles of locks on it (in fact, one of the locks is a geocache...though we never did find it... so many to look through). Moving along, while in Old Town, we spent time looking through all the little shops and we went to Mozart's birth home. It was interesting to go through.

Lots of locks! Almost any bridge we've been on in Europe has some.

The view of Hohensalzburg from the bridge

Old Town street in Salzburg

Mozart's Birth House

The most found geocache in Salzburg. A weather tower. Very cool.

According to the weather tower, it was a nice 4C.

We then went and walked over to the Dom. A very interesting church. We went through a lot of churches on this trip, but each one had something different about it. One thing they all have in common though, they are all big!

The view while standing beside the Dom

The Dom

Ceiling of the dome inside the Dom.

The basement of the Dom

This was on the door of the Dom. So strange. What's the story?

And then we explored Stiftskirche St Peter. My favorite was the walk through the cemetery... you know the one, the one at the end of The Sound of Music and they're hiding from the Nazis. The interesting thing about the cemetery was the fact that even the new tomb stones looked hundreds of years old. You couldn't tell which ones were newer than other by looking at them, only the date on them would you know. They also have some very cool Catacombs there that we walked through.

Very cool cemetery

The catacombs in the cemetery

Going into the catacombs

Inside the catacombs

The view from up in the catacombs

Stiftskirche St Peter

Inside Stiftskirche St Peter

We then paid for a lift that took us up to Hohensalzburg. Now even though Hohensalzburg is technically a castle, it's one that I would say is more like a fortress. It was not fancy like any other castles. It's quite plain inside. Most walls that we saw were just plain white plaster. But the location of Hohensalzburg was such that it would be next to impossible for someone to attack it. Literally on the top of a hill and a steep hill at that. We went on a guided audio tour... which was so boring! I think we both couldn't wait for it to finish. We enjoyed seeing it, but we didn't like having to spend so long inside each location. The funniest was when it took us to the "torture chamber" but then they said that no torture was ever done there and that they just had items from elsewhere that they keep here. Okay.

Love the big tree in the courtyard

Stuck on a boring guided audio tour.

They had an area all about marionettes

It was early evening and Hohensalzburg was just closing. So we went for a walk down along Mönchsberg, one of the mountains in Salzburg. At the end of our walk, we came to a lovely restaurant that had an amazing view of the Hohensalzburg and the city of Salzburg below. Dinner was fancy... though one of our main courses, I'm not sure what it was but I think it was some thinly sliced raw meat? It looked pretty but wasn't the tastiest. Anyways, we enjoyed our dinner and then it was time for us to head back to Munich.