Salzburg - Legoland (Germany) - Rothenburg (Germany)

What a busy few days we have had!

On Sunday we left Salzburg and having already decided to give Neuschwanstein castle a miss (it was just too far to drive in a day...I mean, we COULD have done it....but it wouldn't have been fun for anyone!!) and headed into Germany towards our hotel near Legoland.

Crossing the border from Austria to Germany

As we crossed the border, we noticed that all of the rest stops along the freeway were totally full of trucks and that there were no trucks on the freeway itself. I haven't looked this up yet but my thoughts are that on Sundays as least, the big trucks are not allowed to drive on the freeways.....this is (I think) a fantastic law and one that the Australian government should definitely consider!! It would certain save Shane's sanity every time we have to drive between Sydney and Newcastle.

Trucks at a rest stop....

The other thing we noticed once going into Germany, is that the autobahn (or freeway) has no speed limit on freeways that are 3 lanes travelling in each direction. Shane got excited when he got our little car up to 150km/hr....and this was while still in the middle lane...there were still lots of cars that were flying past us that must have been doing close to 200km/hr!!!

Shane gets the car up to 150km/hr!!!

Since we were basically driving around the outskirts of Munich, we decided to take a quick detour into the city of Munich. Munich was in the midst of Octoberfest so the city itself was completely overrun by possibly every backpacker currently in europe......I haven't heard so many Australian accents since leaving Sydney airport!!! We did stumble upon one of the brewery beer halls and took a quick look around inside (just to say that we had been to a beer hall during Octoberfest)....

It was totally packed and VERY noisy!! Whilst it looked like everyone was having a great time...it really wasn't the place to be with small children - so we didn't hang around. Although we will tell our children that they have already done the Munich Octoberfest thing so there will be no need for them to go there when they are in their 20s.

So we continued on to our hotel which was just down the road from Legoland.

This morning we woke to drizzly, grey skies - perfect weather for keeping the crowds away from Legoland!!!

We got to Legoland early with 2 very excited girls. 

Outside Legoland

It was REALLY quiet. Sure it was cold (14 degrees max) and a bit foggy...but it wasn't raining so we powered through the park all day with hardly any trouble. The most we had to wait for any ride was about 10 minutes and on some of the rides the kids got off and then walked straight back on (actually on one ride they didn't even get off because there was no one waiting to get on!).....absolutely ideal for any amusement park scenario!!!!

Legoland is actually pretty cool with some pretty impressive lego displays....and the rides are very age-appropriate for our kids. We got around the entire park and went on all the rides we wanted to (some of them multiple times) and saw the lego displays and the lego factory.....it must have been one the of the quietest days they have ever had. There really was hardly anyone there. BONUS!

The flying lego planes - the kids could control how high or low their planes flew...

The lego jousting horses

Eloise's first ever roller-coaster ride

A view of the mini lego "lands" - there are about 12 different scenes built entirely of lego. You can also see how beautiful the trees are becoming with autumn....

One of the mini-lands....this one is Amsterdam.

Neve with her light sabre and darth vader.






































The lego display with the largest number of lego pieces....a famous face....

Shane and Neve on the water ride....













We had a ball at Legoland....it was a really great place.

Once we left Legoland we drove for another hour and a half (at 140km/hr mind you!) to reach out hotel for the next 2 nights in the German town called Rothenburg.

It is a beautiful medieval walled city that seems to have more Japanese tourists than I have seen anywhere else in europe....Neve and Eloise had to pose for a photo with some Japanese who thought they were very beautiful girls!!!

One of the little streets inside the old town...

The main square in Rothenburg.












We are looking forward to exploring more of this lovely town tomorrow.

One thing I forgot to mention about our time in Salzburg......everywhere we have been in Austria (and even now in Germany) - there are shops selling these chocolates called "Mozartkugeln". They are mostly by brand called Mirabell but when I googled it, the original Mozartkugeln were made by a company called Furst, who actually won the gold medal in 1905 for their hand-made Mozartkugeln. So we managed to track down the original Furst shopfront in Salzburg and try one of the hand-made Mozartkugeln.....
They were delicious and MUCH nicer than the Mirabell (non-handmade) versions!!!

The Furst shop












The wrapper of the original Mozartkugeln is silver and blue....the more common mass-produced version has gold and red wrappers...

The Mozartkugeln....the dot of chocolate on the top is where the skewer was put in to hand roll the  ball in the chocolate.....then the skewer 'hole' is filled with chocolate - hence the extra dot on top!

Inside....a pistachio-marzipan centre, covered in nougat and chocolate....

Salzburg - the hills are alive...

Today, Shane was in charge of "adventure day".....and what a fabulous job he did!!!

We set off fairly early in the morning (9am) and drove through the Salzburg country-side to the town of Mondsee, which is famous for the cathedral that Maria and the Captain got married in, in the Sound of Music...and I tell you, there were at LEAST 4 couples getting married there today - we saw 4 different brides in the space of 20 minutes - Saturdays must be the day for weddings (as it is at home I guess!).

The famous church..with some wedding cars out the front...

Another bride arrives.....

Some of the colourful buildings in the town square....








The next stop on Shane's magical mystery tour was St Gilgen. This town has an amazing gondola that will take you all the way to the top of the mountain (it takes about 10 minutes to get to the top in the gondola - or a 2 hour hike up....no thanks!). The girls were VERY excited to say the least.

The gondola station at the bottom.....

On we get..fighting for who gets on first.....

Up we go....over the road and up the hill.....

And up

And up...just when you think it couldn't get any higher...

We even spotted a few deer on the mountain beneath us....you can "just" see one in this picture (look just to the right of the brown grasses around the middle of the picture)....

We FINALLY made it to the top....totally worth it for the amazing view!!! I think some of the opening credits for the Sound of Music are filmed here as well....

The gondolas seem to go all the way up into the sky...

We stopped for a coffee/hot chocolate at the top.....an even nicer view than the cafe at the Salzburg castle!

Above the cafe is the actual mountain peak (only about a 5 minute hike)...this is the view on the other side of the mountain....right at the back you can see a glacier in the midst of the mountains...

The girls thought this was the most fantastic adventure ever.....!!!






Once we got back down the mountain we had a quick explore of St Gilgen town.....being part of bavaria it has a very typical style....the flowers, the colours and the shapes all work so well together....gorgeous.

St Gilgen main town...






After leaving St Gilgen we drove further south and around the other side of the lake to a town called St Wolfgang, named after the lake itself (Wolfgangsee).....this was very pretty although very touristy...and a lot of boats that do tours around the lake leave from this point....you can see why so many tourists like it here though...

We returned back to Salzburg after our adventure, very happy that we had gone out to explore this area. Thanks Shane for being a fantastic tour director!!! We spent our final afternoon in Salzburg in a beer garden watching the girls spinning around and around a pole until Eloise came unstuck and fell over. Much tears resulted but she is fine and the pizza for dinner and the One Direction concert on TV (should I be concerned that both my girls LOVE this band?) made her forget she had even hurt herself!!!

Tomorrow we have decided to bypass Neuschwanstein castle.....it will add an extra 2 hours driving time on our day and apparently you can only do guided tours that go for half an hour anyway.....it isn't worth the extra hassle driving with the kids (those of you with young kids - or those of you who have had young kids at some point - will understand).....so instead we will do the straight 3 hour trek into Germany to find our hotel right near the Legoland amusement park so we can get cracking early on Monday morning!!

Salzburg - sound of music

The last 2 days in Salzburg have been great...I am actually getting sick of writing how great everything is....I need new adjectives!!!

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....