Friday morning, I got to Lyon mid-morning to catch my flight. I had a two-hour layover in Bruxelles (yes, quite out of the way), which I productively used to watch Sound of Music and enjoy a chocolate-covered waffle! I landed at the Vienna airport in the early evening, where I met Sara. We settled for dinner in the terminal before catching our train (or trains) to Salzburg.
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| The train ride from Vienna to Salzburg is around 3 hours |
Ohhh boy... First of all, I'm used to the French public transportation and train system. I'm used to clearly marked itineraries, unlike the one we bought for our trip to Salzburg through Austria's rail system. So it wasn't until after we arrived at the platform that I realized that we had 3 different trams/trains we had to make, all of which were only three to six minutes apart from one another. Long story short, we missed our scheduled train to Salzburg! We did eventually make it on to the last train of the night with a little help from an almost too-friendly gentleman, who directed us to the proper train station via the metro.
We didn't arrive into town until almost one in the morning! From there, it felt like Munich all over again - we navigated our way to our hostel through a cold fog, which ended up only being a 10-minute walk away. This was my first time in a hostel and I was pleasantly surprised - it was very clean and we even got our own room despite our 6-bed room reservation!
The next day, we woke up early to get ready to meet Annalisa who was arriving around 7:30 in the morning and make our Sound of Music tour. The tour was beautiful! The bus took us to all the locations and inspirations for the movie and gave us the history behind the real von Trapp family - the only disappointment was that we were not permitted to enter the buildings where the home/garden scenes were filmed. We saw the two mansions used for the von Trapp villa, the famous gazebo, and visited Mondsee (a nearby town with a beautiful church where the wedding took place at the end of the movie).
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| Von Trapp villa and the lake Maria and the kids fall into! |
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| The famous gazebo and Mondsee's St. Michael's Church |
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| Street of Mondsee |
We were back in Salzburg by the early afternoon and left with the rest of the day to explore the city freely! We spent some time in Mirabell Square, where parts of the "Do-Re-Mi" song is filmed and where I slipped in some water that seemed to have just materialized right under my foot as it touched a marble walkway (no harm, no foul - except maybe for Sara, but we won't talk about that here).
Ensuite... We headed over to Altstadt ("Old Town"), a collection of cobblestone streets alongside bordering the Salzach River and lined with various boutiques. We shopped around, wandered into a few chocolate shops and tried Mozartkugels. What's a Mozartkugel? It's a ball of green pistachio marzipan, covered in a layer of nougat, dunked in chocolate - a delicious sphere of sweetness created by the Salzburg confectioner, Paul Fürst, and named after Wolfgang Mozart, who was born in Salzburg!
The town is beautiful! We admired a few churches, did a little bit of Christmas shopping, and got a preview of the famous Salzburg Chriskindlmarkt that starts up next week. By early afternoon, the three of us were exhausted from an early morning and a lot of walking so we settled down at a cute, little café for coffee and some relaxation time.
Then we went back to the hostel so Annalisa could drop some of her things off before we went to dinner. This is when my whole "hostels-aren't-so-bad" feeling disappeared. Upon arrival, we were told that the man from the night before had checked us into the wrong room so all of our things had been crammed into our bags by a stranger and thrown behind the front desk. I was so frustrated by the way they dealt with the situation, but they conciliated the issue with three free drink coupons.
For dinner, we were looking for something Austrian! We ended up finding an extremely authentic Austria restaurant tucked in a little alleyway with a mouthwatering menu. Sara and I picked stuffed weinerschnitzel and Annalisa had a delicious stew. Unfortunately, the service wasn't as good as the food - we definitely felt the pressure to leave after we declined the dessert menu. Apparently, Austrians aren't as laid-back as the French in this matter!
After dinner, we hung out in the bar/lobby area of the hostel, where we met several other young travelers (most of which were American). The night ended with the three of us going to our respective bunks in a room with an extremely older man and woman. The man was already asleep in the room when we got back, but the woman didn't come in until after. Not only did she make an unbelievably amount of noise and flick the main light on and off, she also fell off her top bunk while trying to climb down the short ladder! (Don't worry, she was totally fine! We were probably more frazzled than she.)
Sunday morning, the three of us woke up at 5:30 in the morning to catch an early train to Vienna. We were a little delirious, but made it to the city fine and were able to explore a bit before Annalisa had to catch her flight back to Bonn! Unfortunately, we weren't able to see much since most of the city was shut down for Sunday (a classic Europe move).
After a desperately needed nap, Sara and I went back out to brave the cold and explore the Christmas markets, or Christkindlmarkts, we saw setting up earlier! We had a great time seeing the streets lit up in festive glory and shopping for small gifts.
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| Warming our hands with pumpkin soup |
Several purchases, pictures, and hot drinks later, we headed back to our hostel for the rest of the night. Before we knew it, we were on the 7am shuttle and back at the Vienna International Airport. Note to self and fellow travelers: when going to both Salzburg and Vienna in the same trip, give yourself at least 2 days in each city - we felt so rushed and weren't able to see as much as we wish we could do to our limited time frame!
Auf wiedersehen, Austria!
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