salzburg

After our time in Nürnberg, we hopped a train to Salzburg, Austria. This is a lovely Baroque city that originally made its money from salt (hence the "Salz" in both "Salzburg" and the "Salzach River," upon which it is situated) and now makes its money from tourism.

You may know Salzburg as the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, or from its role in The Sound of Music. (Most Austrians are completely unfamiliar with this movie.) Or, you may know Salzburg as the place from whence your nice flannel Lanz nighties came. :)

We stayed at the Hotel Goldene Krone, which was clean and neat, and had a tiny elevator, which made luggage transportation much nicer. It was on the Linzergasse, which has few vehicles. However, I was pretty sure one of us was going to get run over by a bicycle.

This was the view to the left outside our room:

And this was the view straight ahead:

And this was the view to the right:

And St. Sebastian Church was the view to the farther right, if I kind of hung out the window. Salzburg was nicknamed "the Rome of the North." It has 38 Catholic churches, two Protestant churches, and one synagogue. St. Sebastian's had big bells that rang on the half hour until 9:30 at night. The second night, I thought they quit ringing at 9:00, fell asleep, and then woke up half an hour later, and stayed awake until 4:00 in the morning. Yay, jet lag. (I read almost three entire novels on our vacation, which I will tell you about in a later post.)

This was the window I was hanging out. I thought it was so pretty:

Our hotel had a cute courtyard that we couldn't get to because it's wintertime, but it was cute, anyway.

Our hotel was north of the river in the "New Town" section of Salzburg, which is "new" only in the sense that it is medieval rather than Roman. (Our hotel was built in the 15th century.) It's a very, very old city. :) After we settled into our room, we walked a bit south, and crossed the Staatsbrucke bridge over the Salzach river and into the Old Town.

There's the Hohensalzburg Fortress in the background, above the twin spires of Salzburg Cathedral. They never really had to use the fortress, because as Rick Steves explains, it was so foreboding that nobody attacked it for a thousand years. Then, when Napoleon and his guys showed up, Salzburg just surrendered. (This was a wise decision.) So they were never actually taken by force.

My favorite cities are centered around rivers.

Getreidegasse (old Salzburg's "main drag") and some of the surrounding streets in the Old Town are known for their beautiful iron signs. It's kind of a congested shopping area, but the architecture is really pretty.

Well, Hello, Dali!

Claire was mesmerized by the touristy Easter and Christmas shops.

We headed over to Residenzplatz, which was once a Roman forum.

Salzburg had kind of a messy history run by leaders known as "Prince-Archbishops," because they had both secular and religious authority, which is just never really a good idea, if you ask me. Power corrupts, especially when you are a prince of the Holy Roman Empire. But they're mighty interesting to read about, in a titillating, celebrity-gossip type of way.

Anyway, because of this connection with Rome, all things Italian (including architecture) were hot, hot, hot. Local artists would sometimes even Italianize their names in order to raise their rates.

There was a Christmas market set up here, and I thought you might like to see these garland thingies:

&

She was such a trooper!

We headed over to Salzburg Cathedral, which is full of many interesting things, including the font where Mozart was baptized. He was also an organist here for two years. (Incidentally, Amadeus means "beloved by God.")

It also has a prayer chapel (downstairs with the crypts) that has a neat door.

A tour guide we had the next day was somewhat mortified that the city had chosen to allow Kronehit Radio 94.0 to put advertising banners on the front of the Cathedral. They were hard to miss.

Dusk fell. Look how mysterious and foreboding the castle looks in the moonlight. I wouldn't attack it, would you?

This fountain is actually a horse bath. Horses walked in one end, dirty, and walked out clean, the other end. There is a very cool puzzle above this horse bath. It says "Leopold the Prince Built Me," written using the letters LLDVICMXVXI, which total 1732. This is the year the horse bath was built. :)

If you walk through this gate you can go see St. Peter's Cemetery, which was one of my favorite things on our entire trip.

Do you recognize this? The Hollywood set for the cemetery where the von Trapp family hid (after we found out Rolf was actually a Nazi, and loved Hitler more than he loved Liesl) was modeled after this cemetery.

But if the von Trapps had hidden in this cemetery in real life, they would not have been able to squeeze behind the gravestones, which are built into the cliff. You can't miss the cliff. It's huge. Monks used to live up this cliff, somehow.

St. Peter's Cathedral and this whole area was just so beautiful as the light faded.

And look at this. This is the Stiftskeller St. Peter restaurant. It is the oldest restaurant in Europe. Charlemagne ate here in A.D. 803. I wonder what he ate.

We ourselves were hungry and tired, so we headed back across the bridge towards our hotel and the restaurants north of the river.

Claire was not too tired, however, to eat her icecream dessert.

There is more Salzburg to come! Because you haven't even been on The Sound of Music tour with me yet, and that was fantastic! :)