So we were here because of it's scenic beauty.
As always TripAdvisor had shown us a fine hotel by the Salsach River, just a short walk across a bridge to the Old Town where a rocky outcropping is crowned by a fortress.
After checking into our hotel and unpacking I walked with Ciaran to his hotel in the Old Town so by the time I returned the sun was low in the sky and bathing the fortress in "Magic Light".
Our room in the Hotel Sacher. The furnishings spoke of an earlier age which is fine by us as we don't look for "modern" in decor. It was a very elegant hotel and in the lobby had many photographs of the famous Opera singers and classical music conductors who had stayed there. Most importantly for us it was quiet and the service was stellar.
It was definitely 5 o'clock somewhere -maybe even in Salzburg, so I walked across the bridge to meet Ciaran who had already unpacked everything except his thirst for Austrian beer. We met in a quiet cobbled square in the old town and enjoyed our beer as dusk was settling in.
Carol is a lifelong Mozart fan whereas I don't listen to his music unless forced to. She was excited to be in his birthplace. As I sat opposite Ciaran reminiscing about an old dear friend who had died in Northern Ireland just a few days before I noticed at the end of the square a yellow house bearing the legend "Mozart Geburtshaus", indeed the home to the infant Wolfgang. Wait until Carol sees this !!
I called her on our rented Blackberry phones, rented so that we could keep in touch with Ciaran who was staying in a different hotel and told her where we were and would she care to join us? Care, she did and within 20 minutes was sitting beside Ciaran with her back to the Mozart crib, unaware.
It took quite a bit of hinting to get her to turn around and at first she didn't see the giant yellow building...then it hit her!
Next day she would visit the house and be enthralled at stepping on the same floorboards as her musical hero. She went alone.
The sun went down as we sat in a charming square in a beautiful little city on a warm May evening.
At some point, around 9 pm we needed to eat and right there was a rustic Austrian restaurant called
Zum Eulenspiegel. The restaurant was as old as Mozart and in fact his father and he had rented rooms here upon a time. Narrow staircases led up past small rooms filled with diners until we came to the top floor into a small cosy, ancient room. There we would be the only diners after the one occupied table paid their bill. Our table was against a small open window and outside and below us was the Salsach river reflecting the street lamps. With the room to ourselves we were able to relax and chat.
We ordered simple hearty dishes- roast pork with fried potatoes, sauerkraut and bacon and lashings of Steigl beer. For Carol baked salmon and fresh in-season white asparagus. An hour or two passed pleasantly by in the company of my favorite people.
We returned to the Sacher to sleep- a deep cavernous dark and uninterrupted 8 hours of unconsciousness until woken by the warm sun peeking through the heavy curtains. A day of glorious weather awaited us.
The hotel had one of the most elaborate breakfast buffets in our experience. Served in this room with windows looking out over the river.
Our plan today was to meet Ciaran at our hotel and then walk towards the base of the massive rock that supported the Fortress. Along the way we found a statue of Mozart in a sunny square.
And a fountain in another.
Although you can walk up a winding path to the Fortress we are not idiots or keen hikers and instead took a funicular tram up the steep incline.
The mountains in the distance are home to the town of Berchtesgaden, home to Adolf Hitler during World War II.
The beautiful environs of Salzburg
We spent a couple of hours in the Fortress which we simply used as a means to get a better view of the city. There were several outdoor cafes there where we enjoyed a simple lunch of Schnitzels and Beer while basking in the sun and taking in the natural beauty of Austria.
What goes up must come down and so we took the funicular back down to street level. We planned to return to the Fortress that evening for dinner and to see the city lit up but when the time came it looked like a thunderstorm was going to spoil our evening and we canceled our plans and instead walked around with our umbrellas at the ready and ate in a fancy atmosphere-less restaurant.
In the morning , after another wonderful breakfast in the hotel we took a walk and discovered that the house next to the hotel was the birthplace of another famous son of Salzburg-the most famous classical music conductor of the 20 th Century- Herbert Von Karajan.
That's our upcoming lunch spot on our road-trip.
But first we wanted to sit a while in the beautiful Mirabell Gardens....
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