Salzburg

Photo 1: The Dragon's Wall

Photo 2: Basilika Saint Michael - the wedding church in The Sound of Music

Photo 3: The high altar in the church

Photo 4: One side of the choir stalls

Photo 5: Traditional wrought iron sign showing the trade or profession practised inside the shop. This is a locksmith.

Photo 6: By law even McDonalds has to use the traditional signs. Note the lean lion who obviously doesn't eat there :)

Photo 7: Baroque garden in foreground and church and fortress on hill in background. The fortress was for defence of the city in medieval times.

Photo 8: Closer view of church and fortress.

Photo 9: Lunch in the town square

 

On Wednesday we docked at Aschach and took an excursion to Salzburg while the boat sailed on to Passau. We were supposed to return to the boat at Passau, however due to the rising water level in the Danube following recent heavy rains and snow melt near its source we had to meet the boat further upstream at a small town called Vilshofen. If the boat had not moved on past Passau when it did, it would not have been able to fit under one of the bridges and we would have been in a real pickle. Hopefully there won’t be any further problems of this kind.

Anyway, we had a wonderful trip to Salzburg through beautiful farmlands and forests with a stop on the way at the village of Mondsee. The Basilika St Michael at Mondsee was the wedding church in The Sound of Music and it is every bit as magnificent as it appears in the movie.

We had a great time in Salzburg even though Sue’s Garmin said that we walked seven kilometres around the medieval old town. As we boarded our coach we were singing from The Sound  of Music as we were going to see some of the places used when making the movie .  The tour guide, Gunther, rolled his eyes and looked at us.  He smiled, but more like the “Oh my God what have we got here?” smiling assassin look!! Hey singing made us feel good!!! Not bad for a couple of oldies! We enjoyed seeing the house where Mozart was born and the former monastery and 17^th century gothic and baroque church. The trouble with writing a blog like this is that it sounds repetitive and boring when we keep talking about seeing this and that gothic, baroque or art nouveau building. But the fact is we just love these places and never get tired of them as the streetscapes and individual buildings show a surprising diversity and most have obviously been built and decorated with a lot of love. We don’t feel the same as the passenger who was asked what he saw today and said ‘ABC – another bloody church’. Funny comment though J. (Correction…Phil loves them and Sue now says who cares what style they are. Can we just look at them without the history lesson??)

When we got back to the ship we went to the bar and I ordered two Pina Coladas – our usual drink. They make a pretty good PC there, but this time we think the bartender didn’t measure the rum, just emptied the bottle into the glasses. Yeehaa!! Why is the boat moving so much when we’re docked?!