The night before last we took a walk through the town in the evening. We went over the bridge into the old city. One of the bridges in covered in padlocks....the story is young lovers (well that counts Shane and I out!) put a padlock on the bridge and then throw the key into the river below - so they are locked together forever. Very romantic.
Salzburg old town at sunset
The padlocks on the bridge....
Salzburg is all about music - and Mozart in particular. It is literally everywhere....even the bread is music shaped!!!
The next morning was a little wet and soggy, so we decided to take the car and drive just out of the city to a few large shopping centres that we were told were pretty great.
The first one was a designer outlet mall, which was relatively new so some of the shops were still empty. It was a nice mall but there wasn't anything that we loved enough to buy. But we did love the size of the parking spaces in the car park....
You could probably fit 4 cars in these spaces marked for 2.....I wonder how big the disabled parking spots are?
The next mall was called "Europark" and is supposedly the most beautiful shopping centre in the world....I don't know about "beautiful" in terms of how it looked - but there was one thing that made it EXTREMELY attractive to us.....
This shopping centre has its own Kids Club....where you can drop your kids off and they are looked after and can play while you shop......for the exorbitant price of 1 euro for an hour (and 2 euro for 3 hours!!!!)......I LOVE THIS PLACE!! The lady working in the kids club was Irish so she loved our little English speakers....our girls were in there and grabbing toys and going down slides before we even got to say goodbye......
So Shane and I spent 2 hours wandering the shopping centre, not buying much and wondering whether we could leave the kids there for the next 3 days....at 1 euro an hour it would be a very cheap babysitting option!!!!
Once we all got back into Salzburg, we decided to take a walk to one of the Austrian beer halls. We chose Augustiner's because we read that "This is the best example of a large beerhall anywhere in the world. It's situated in a real monastery (the only religious establishment in Austria still brewing)
At first it's as you've entered a small shopping centre because in this pub not only do they let you bring your own picnic but they also provide the shops to buy the food in. There are four or five of them including a bakers and a couple of butchers, providing the traditional (and probably lethally unhealthy) sausages so loved in all the German-speaking areas of Europe. Once past these, in the proper drinking area, you find a series of huge baroque rooms with vertiginously high ceilings and long, sturdy wooden tables.The beer garden is part of a Benedictine monastery founded in 1605 whose worldly brethren began brewing fermented libations in 1621. They specialized then and still do today in brewing a heavily malted Oktoberfest-style beer that is served in distinctive clay-porcelain mugs. The beer is as good as it gets" ......how could we miss this????
On our way in....
Inside one of the beer halls....there are actually 3 of these halls inside the building.
Cheers. The beers are served in porcelain mugs with 2 sizes....big and gigantic - we chose big...
Eloise drinking her beer like a 'lady'.......no......it wasn't really beer, just lemonade for the kids!
The food stalls - Shane wants to come back and have the pig's knuckles he saw in one of them.
The outside beer garden
It was a lovely way to spend an hour or so. I can imagine on a truly busy day, maybe Sunday lunch, with an Austrian band playing this would be like Disneyland for beer fans!!
One thing we have noticed is that people still wear the traditional dresss (the lederhosen and the women's dress - forgotten the name).....it is nice that these traditions are still alive and well.
We walked back along the river which gave us a good look at the buildings built into the rock face.
The castle on the hill in Salzburg
The next day (Friday) was sunny and warm (well - 20 degrees) so we decided to catch the funicular up the hill to the castle.
Up we go...
The view from the top was pretty amazing. Sitting in the sunshine, we stopped for a coffee/hot chocolate with a great view across to the mist covered mountains.
Nice place to stop for a coffee....
Beautiful view with a beautiful girl...
The view from the other side of the castle onto downtown Salzburg
In the castle we had a 'guided' tour (which means we got hand-held sets that told us the history of the castle as we were shepherded through different sections)......the girls liked the novelty of their own 'guides' but not sure they actually listened to much of it.
The girls with their 'guides'
The view from the top of the castle tower.....
The view the other way from the top of the tower....naked man sun baking. Not sure he realised that there were a bunch of people who could see him (most of them taking photos...I think "naked-man on a castle tower" may become an internet sensation!).
Inside the castle walls was also the Marionette Museum.
The girls liked the displays of all the marionettes.
Another day, another "stick your head in a hole" photo!!!
We then went back down the hill to the town and wandered along the river where we had lunch in the sun.
Down we go.....
After lunch we wandered back through the Mirabelle gardens, which are famous for being in the "Sound of Music" movie (where they sing "Doe Ray Me").....and also found a playground with the highest slippery-dip I have ever seen .....
Cool slippery dip...too high for the kids to even attempt to climb!!
Being the city of music, the playground also had this fun musical steps, where each square plays a different note when you step on it. Neve had lots of fun on this!!
The Mirabelle gardens....
The fountain where we all made a wish with a coin.....
The castle in the background....
Neve doing her best Julie Andrews impersonation......."the hills are alive"....
After some fun in the park and a stop at a cupcake shop for afternoon tea, the girls were desperate to go back to the Kids Club at the shopping centre, so we headed back out there and let the kids have another hour in the kids club (who wouldn't for 1 euro??) while Shane and I did more window shopping!!
This ends another day....our last day in Salzburg tomorrow before we leave Austria and head into Germany....
Hi Dempsey Family!! Caught up on the posts after a few weeks of delinquency -- wow have you ever covered alot of territory! Such great adventures and beautiful locations... the girls (and mom & dad) look like they are really enjoying themselves (and Legoland certainly couldn't hurt either!!). Tess & Bryn say HI to the girls... XOXO McCurdy's
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