Salzburg, Austria

Thursday we drove down to Salzburg, Austria the hometown of Mozart and filming area of The Sound of Music. Due to the rain/snow aka crappy weather and Robert's knee hurting him so much we took another tour but this time in a mini van with a couple from CA. Our tour guide had the best English out of all the guides but spent atleast 75% of the time talking German with the three Germans in the van. But Johannes filled me in on anything she forgot to translate. She made it a very nice tour and even pointed out the areas where they filled The Sound of Music. The funny thing is that most Austrians and Germans have never seen the movie (or heard about it) and most of their tourists who come from the US only come to see the filming locations (not because of Mozart). Our guide told us she had to watch the movie for her job so that she could make references to the movie when pointing out a filming locations.

This is a city garden that blooms over 40,000 flowers in the spring. And in the top center of the picture on top of a hill is the city fortress which we later visited.

Here is Salzburg's Christmas market. If you haven't caught on yet Christmas markets are a big thing in Germany, so every large town has one and now even the smaller towns are starting to as well. Not only are they a great place to find handmade qaulity gifts but it is also a great place for the locals to go and socialize over some hot spiced wine.


This was the church we went inside which was located right next to the Christmas market. I think it might be the largest in Salzburg.

Because the weather was so wet and cold we decided after walking around outside that it was time to warm up with some coffee and famous Salzburg chocolate cake at Cafe Mozart (a touristy place but very classy looking and warm!).

This is the outside of Cafe Mozart.

The streets of Salzburg at night during the Christmas season.

There is a mountain running through Salzburg and so they have made a tunnel through it which now connects the old and new parts.

We walked around the fortress that helped protect Salzburg for so many years. But before we did that the guys decided it would be fun to throw snowballs at passing by pedistrians and parked cars a few hundred feet down.