We woke up Tuesday morning a bit later than we had planned. I believe it was 8:45, or even later, which normally wouldn't be a problem, but the breakfast buffet at the hotel closed at 9:30. This meant we really had to rush everyone getting showered/dressed for the day and downstairs in time to eat. The kids' favorite part of vacations is always the hot chocolate they get to have every morning at breakfast. What fun to have the waitress bring a big tray filled with mugs of chocolatey goodness!
It was the usual breakfast fare, several different kinds of cereal, yogurts, fresh fruit, meat and cheese slices, boiled and scrambled eggs, sausage, and at several places on the trip there was even a sort of salad bar. Which, while healthy, seemed like an odd thing to have for breakfast. But being a non-vegetarian, maybe that is what they eat? (Anyone want to enlighten me?) The food was really good, but Sarah had a hard time eating because of the "scary decorations".
Garmisch was originally a hunting paradise for the royal families and their wealthy friends. So all over the walls there are paintings and prints of people on fox hunts, deer hunts, rabbit hunts, etc. along with a healthy mix of stuffed, mounted animal heads. I had to position myself in just the right spot, so that the deer head was hidden behind my own head, otherwise Sarah just sat there with her hands covering her eyes rather than eating. I kept telling her to only look at her plate, or straight out the window, no side to side movement. :) After we finished eating, she covered her eyes again, and I steered her back through the restaurant to the lobby, where it was "safe". My sweet, little sensitive souled child.
After dragging our bags back down to the cars and loading everyone up, we were on our way to Salzburg. We arrived just after noon, and almost didn't get to see the city at all! Right at the exit from the freeway onto the road that leads into town, there was a barricade blocking all but one lane of traffic and a police officer at the end of it. He was making everyone turn to the right and follow some detour signs. At first, we thought it was just a detour around an accident, but then discovered that we had just gone in a giant circle and were right back to the policeman. This time, we rolled down our window and before we had a chance to ask anything, he informed us that all the parking spots in the city were full and that we needed to park in the nearby building and take the bus in. Then waved us on before we could ask anymore questions. As we went around the circle again, we noticed that some cars were getting through, just not us. This didn't make any sense, but provided us with a ray of hope. After all, we did not want to have to leave our cars way out here in the boonies and then come back to them later that night and then still have to drive to our hotel. So, up we came to the police officer again. Chris waved the hotel booking papers he had printed out from the internet, and the police officer let us through. Fortunately, he didn't look at the papers too closely, or else he would have seen that our hotel was actually on the other side of Salzburg and we didn't have a parking spot in the city after all. :)
Our secret weapon was that Chris had lived in Salzburg for 6 months as a missionary and knew it pretty well. We drove over to his old apartment and there were all kinds of parking spaces on the street. It was a short walk into the city from there, and a very pleasant one as it was right along the Salzach.
His apartment is the set of windows directly above our car. There are missionaries still living there, as evidenced by the Church's name on the doorbell. So fun. The first order of business was to see a bit of downtown and then get some food. On our walk we got a great view of the Festung,
and saw a few things from the past as well. Here is the building where Chris registered as a resident of the city while he was a missionary. Right next door to our intended destination was the church where Angie's Aunt and Chris' great aunt worshipped.
She lived in Salzburg for many years, and Chris even taught her some of the discussions while he was serving there. Unfortunately, she passed away a few years ago. Then we went to eat at the oldest restaurant in Europe, St. Peter's Keller.
It is reported that Charlemagne stopped and had a bite to eat here as well. As if that wasn't reason enough to want to eat here, the food is real authentic Austrian fare, totally delicious and quite reasonable considering how nice of a place it is. Was just a bit more than McDonalds, quite honestly. But oh, so much better. Check out my gorgeous Schnitzel!
We had timed our meal well, since it was after the lunch rush, but before dinner started. The kids were on their best behavior, but it wasn't a totally tragedy when Alexandra decided to take off running through the empty tables. 🙂 Amelia wasn't sure about the Schnitzel, she was getting it confused with the Spaetzle noodles I had made earlier, that weren't her favorite. But we convinced her to order it and she loved it. Sarah had plain spaghetti noodles, which turned out to taste "funny" to her, but fortunately Sophie's Schnitzel came with a generous serving of french fries, which she hates, so she gave them to Sarah. Chris, with all his food allergies wasn't sure what he could eat, so ordered something he thought would be safe.
This is called a Salzburger Nockerl, and is made of egg whites, sugar and fruit at the bottom. It was sooo good! Noah totally loved it. Said it tasted like marshmallows, which it kind of did. In fact, I think there was only one or two in our group who didn't eat quite a bit of it.
After our very satisfying lunch, we headed off to conquer the Festung. Since it was getting to be late afternoon already, we decided to skip the 40 minute walk up the hill, and just rode the cogwheel train up to the top.
We had paid for audio guides, but the line to get them was quite long, and we were short on time, so we just did the best we could with our guidebook and the posted signs. This is one of the few castles I have been to where you really get a feel for what life was like hundreds of years ago. The outer dwellings and shops around the inner castle are all still intact. There are even little streets winding through the outer courtyard that you can walk on. The kids had fun climbing up this old pile of cannon balls.
One of the old family dwellings is now being used as a sort of art gallery, so we walked in and looked around. The kids all pretended that it was a cold day and they were huddled around the fire trying to keep warm.
The views of the city below are spectacular as well. This is the Abbey where Maria lived before she went to the Von Trapp household. If you don't know what I am talking about, are you sure we are really friends? 🙂
After we came back down the mountain, we headed over to Schloss Mirabell and it's beautiful gardens.
This would be another famous Sound of Music landmark. I have always loved the green grass contrasting with the bright red flowers. It's like permanent Christmas decorations! From here on out, I was not allowed to use the fancy camera, as I had left it on the back of the stroller in which Sophie was taking a little ride. Also on the back of the stroller were everyone's jackets because it had threatened to rain earlier and we wanted to be prepared, but it was not too hot to wear them. When Sophie got out of the stroller, it became severely imbalanced, but as long as I held on to the handles it was fine. Then I let go in a moment of airheadedness and down crashed the whole thing, with the camera taking the brunt of the fall. Completely shattered the filter, but fortunately the lens itself was still okay, no scratches or anything. Still, I was no longer burdened with it's safekeeping, and won't be for a while.
Anyway, it was now quite late, so we walked back along the Salzach to our cars and headed over to our hotel. It was a true family-run establishment, and the lady there was so friendly and helpful. We had two large rooms, right next to each other, and no one else on the whole floor. Again, we had a girls' room and a mostly boys' room, and the kids were up later than we would have liked. But the beds were comfy, and the fans cooling off the rooms helped a ton with the summer heat.