A Picturesque Day in Salzburg

From Budapest we went to Salzburg. We choose to use the most recommended method of traveling between European cities, trains! Before we jump into the Salzburg I want to take a minute to talk about the trains.

While there are many websites selling train tickets, most forums pushed to purchase directly from OBB the Austrian Federal Railway. The website was not too hard to use.. the tickets were not too expensive. It was a 5 hour journey from Budapest to Salzburg and we paid $23 per adult. Both children rode for free. Now here's the tricky part. After reading many forums there was a divided view on seat reservations. It cost $10 to reserve a seat, most said the trains are empty and you can just sit wherever you want until someone with a reservation for your seat shows up.. then just find another spot. This did not seem appealing with children and luggage.. plus what if we got on that particular train that had no empty seats! So we made reservations. But now here's the next tricky part.. while both children ride free D gets a seat and H who is five doesn't!? It never occurred to me that I should have gone back and changed H's age. So when we got to the Budapest train station (which by the may was in decay and made me a bit concerned about all future train stations) the kids and I squished ourselves into two seats while M sat with a fellow traveler. And just like we had feared the train was packed! Not a fun five hours. Towards the very end a few seats did open up and I got to move to a seat of my own but that was not how we wanted to spend our other train journeys. Otherwise the train was fine.. nothing fancy but not bad. And like in an airplane and attendant with snacks and coffee roamed the aisles.

Moving on.

Now for those of you who don't know.. the Sound of Music was filmed in Salzburg. Confession - I have never watched the Sound of Music. I know what it's about and have seen pictures from the movie but that is it. And while the resident of Salzburg don't really care about the movie they do have plenty of Sound of Music tours and even a small museum.

Yikes.. that was very word heavy.. lets get to the pictures. 

We arrived in Salzburg around 1pm and were surprised to find how modern and nice the Salzburg train station was especially compared to the Budapest station. We grabbed a taxi and headed to our hotel, Cityhotel Trumer Stube. The inner city was a no car zone, the taxi drivers had a remote that lower the metal barracks so they could enter. Our hotel was lovely, the set out a table of juice and sweets for the guests and were extremely nice. 

We checked in and then had a quick lunch at  Kapuziner Imbiss, it was supposed to be a quick vegan hot dog but considering it was a one man show as both cook and waiter it took a tad longer than we hoped. He was extremely nice. Once we were done we headed toward the water in search for a taxi to take us to Schloss Hellbrunn. The palace was built in 1613 for the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg. Our main reason for being there was to see the Trick Fountains, which can only be seen via a tour. While we waited for our tour to begin we roamed the gardens.

The trick fountains are a lovely example of Mannerist architecture and are the only surviving example of the water fun parks that used to be a common status symbol among the Italian aristocracy. Hellbrunn’s first owner the famed Archbishop Marcus Sittikus enjoyed delighting his many guests with watery surprises. At all of these games there is always a spot which is never wet: that was where the Archbishop stood or sat.

We didn't come with too high an expectation.. we thought it might be a little watery fun for the kids.. but considering that these fountains were made in the 17th century they were a delight indeed. The kids were soak 5 minutes into the tour when all the kids sat at the Archbishop's outdoor dining table. Water shot out of all the seats except for the one at the head of the table where the archbishop sat. Even though M and I were on alert we too go wet. The tour had everyone laughing.

While wandering the grounds we spotted a hike to an overlook and decided to explore. The hike was much longer than we had expected and the views not as stunning as we had imagined.

Time to head back to the inner city. We walked around.. grabbed some gelato at Cafe Habakuk. 

While I expected to Salzburg to be a quaint village I was surprised to find it's streets lined with designer stores. But of so many fabulous street signs.. 

Can you believe this McDonald's sign?

On the hunt for dinner we made a major rookie mistake. I check reviews for everything.. but we were tired and we spotted an Asian restaurant called Tokyo Japan and had one of the worst meals ever. It was a plate of noodles just floating around in a salty brown soya sauce concoction! Horrible!

The next morning we went to the famous Sacher Cafe for breakfast. Very fancy. And the home of the Sacher Torte. The first and original Sacher Cafe was founded in 1876 in Vienna which we also visited and ate the famous Sacher Torte as well.. but more on that later.

That morning for breakfast we ate eggs and the boys shared a french toast and they both got hot chocolates :)

and then with only a couple of hours before we had to head to the train station we hit the streets. We crossed the Makartsteg Bridge more commonly know as the Love Lock Bridge over the Salzach River.

and wandered the streets especially Getreidegasse and it's beautiful store signs.

The Salzburg Cathedral behind us.. we did not go inside.

and then we took a funicular up to the Hohensalzburg Fortress.. the views from their were stunning.

Before we knew it it was time to head to the train station. While we had purchased the Budapest to Salzburg tickets in advance we had planned on buying the Salzburg to Vienna tickets the day of. It was a simple process. A train goes to Vienna about every 30 mins ago. While there M straightened out the whole H having no seat situation and for all our next journeys we had a great seats with a large table :)

     

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