Salzburg Austria - Aug 23 to 25, 2009

Salzburg, the birthplace of Mozart. This is also where the movie, The Sound of Music took place. You can feel the rich musical heritage throughout the city. When you walk down the street the buskers aren't the usual talentless hobos, haha. They are professional violinists or string quartets. They all have CDs available for sale and you actually feel an urge to stop and listen. One band in particular caught our attention. Mainly because of the instruments they were playing. A Bayan (Russian Accordion) 2 Balalaikas (like a small guitar with 3 strings) and a Balalaika Bass (like a stand-up bass with 3 strings). We had to look online to figure out what they were playing. The sound was incredible. Jess has another instrument he is determined to play now. Hmmm, that must be about 7 instruments now, maybe he should just finish learning the banjo first!


We spent 4 nights in Salzburg. The first night we did the usual evening exploring. On Monday we visited the Salzburg Fortress, on Tuesday we did a day trip and we had to use Wed to rest. We are getting worn out!

We're getting ahead of ourselves. The first evening we started by walking through a beautiful garden. Salzburg is on the footsteps of the Swiss Alps, so the scenery is breath-taking and the city's pride really shows. We also walked through the old city centre and checked out a few of the churches and old buildings.



Monday was a busy but very fun day. We had to do some laundry in the morning so we didn't get the earliest start, but we got to the Fortress as quickly as we could. We spent the majority of the day there. The view from the top tower was incredible. You had a 360 degree view of the mountains and lakes. The fortress was built by 17 successive arch-dukes. Each one fortified it further and further. It was supposedly impossible in bust into. It has never been invaded, but was given up to Napoleon without a fight. We had took the guided tour and spent a couple hours walking around on our own.








Tuesday we needed a recovery day so we slept in, got did some grocery shopping and took it fairly easy, enjoying Salzburg for the rest of the day.

On Wednesday we did a day trip to Gunzburg, Germany. Why would we go to Germany? Because we didn't have time to make a very important stop... What is so important about Gunzberg?? That's where Legoland is!! The details will be in the next post.

Heidelberg, Germany - Aug 16, 2009

We decided that a day-trip was in order for Sunday. We looked around online and found out that Heidelberg is only an hour away by train and has a castle. We were sold. We caught a train around 10am. It was definitely worth it. The city is a little too touristy for our liking, but there were quite a few sights to see. We began by walking along the river into the old town centre. We ate lunch in a plaza beside an old church. It had a great view of the castle, which was further up the side of a small mountain. After lunch we made our way up to the castle.


Inside the castle there were a variety of museum exhibits. There was a giant keg for storing wine. I can't remember exactly, but I think it held 140,000 Litres! There was also a medicine and pharmacy museum. The view from the top of the castle was unbelievable!

The entrance to the castle still had the steel drop-down gates!


The castle was surrounded by a couple green courtyards.



When we were done with the castle we tried to find the old University. Heidelberg is home to the oldest university in Germany. The school itself is split into several buildings throughout the city. The ones we saw weren't very picturesque so we were disappointed. They looked like regular old buildings, nothing fancy or extravagant.

After the university we felt like a challenge, so we embarked on the Philosopher's Walk. It begins at the base of the river and heads immediately up a steep path winding up the mountain. We are both in pretty good shape, but it was exhausting! It was also 32 degrees out, so that may have contributed... haha. The view at the top was magnificant! There was a great view of the river, the castle, the churches and the entire city with all the red roofs of the buildings. By then it was getting a bit late, so we walked back to the train station and went back to Frankfurt for the night. Heidelberg ended up being a fantastic day trip. We were both very glad we went.








Tomorrow we are heading to Munich!