Saturday morning we hit the road for Salzburg from Munich. As we neared our hotel in Salzburg all three of us were a little surprised by the sketchiness of our surroundings. It was a very Griswold-Roll-'Em-Up moment. We found our hotel, grudgingly parked the car in the questionable neighborhood, and walked into the hotel feeling a little out of place. Other than the girl working the counter at the hotel, there really weren't any other human beings around. It was SO strange! After we checked-in we quickly dropped our bags off in our room (again, no one in the halls of the hotel, no voices coming from other rooms...it was SO quiet that we all felt like we had to whisper when we were in our own hotel room...ha!) and got out of the hotel to explore. We immediately learned that our hotel was in the sex shop/gambling hall neck o' the woods, which, I might add, was not at all what they advertised on their website. We walked a few blocks towards what we hoped was a better part of town. Slowly, but surely, the town started to brighten up with other people and nicer surroundings. About a mile into our walk we finally felt like we were in Salzburg and not some sketchy deserted neighborhood. We found this cool path and started walking up:
It led us to this cool view of the city:
From that view we could see the Salzburg Castle on the other side of the river and decided we wanted to go visit. We walked back down to street level, found some delicious lunch and then made our way over to the Castle. Along the way we finally found the heart of Salzburg. Once we crossed the river everything looked like we thought it would. Cute store fronts, lots of other tourists, and cool sights. In a large square we stumbled upon this giant fountain:
The photo dosen't do it justice, but this fountain was HUGE. I tried to find some information about it online, but no luck. After we admired the fountain for a few minutes we pressed forward on our trek to see the Castle. The Castle was located way up high on a cliff, so we had a lot of steep walking ahead of us. Once we made it up there we drank in the remarkable view of the city below:
Oh and yes, those are rain clouds and dreary weather. We just can't seem to escape it! We wandered around the Castle for a while and then finally made our way back down into the city streets. One of the first major buildings we walked by was the Salzburg Cathedral, we decided to go in. I am so glad we did! The Cathedral was beautiful, very different from other cathedrals we've seen. Take a look for yourself:
We learned later that the Salzburg Cathedral was the site of Mozart's baptism. After a peaceful visit to the Cathedral we were ready for some warm, dry indoor time, but none of us felt like going back to our weird hotel so we opted for an Irish bar. We saddled up to the bar for a drink and some World Cup action. Once we were sufficiently warm we made our way back to the hotel for a quiet evening of take-out and more World Cup soccer. So although Salzburg started off a little startling, we ended up enjoying our time out in town.
The next morning we decided we wanted to go explore the Austrian Ice Cave (aka Eisriesenwelt). The Ice Cave in Werfen, Austria is the largest ice cave in the world. We drove 30 minutes south and found ourselves at the start of our journey to the Ice Cave. Photography is not allowed in the Ice Cave so we have no photos to document this trip, but it was a cool one! We first parked the car, walked 5 minutes to the ticket center, bought our tickets, then walked 20 minutes up a steep incline (we're in the heart of the Austrian Alps at this point) to the tram. The tram zipped us up for about 5 minutes at what felt like a 50% incline then dropped us off to walk another 20 minutes up steep terrain. Then we reached the end of the line of people waiting for their tour of the Cave. We waited in line for about 40 minutes before we were able to enter. It was SO worth the wait in the rain and chilly weather. The Ice Cave was phenomenal. Zero degrees and almost pitch black darkness greeted us as we entered the Cave. We were led through the Cave by a fun and informative tour guide. We walked 1 kilometer in and 1 kilometer out covering just over 1000 stairs inside of the cave, all the while taking in the splendor of the massive ice formations. I highly recommend you check out their website to get an idea of what the ice looks like. We then made our way back down the mountain, hopped in the (warm) car and drove to Munich to drop off Nate.
We had an awesome time with Nate and are so glad we were able to hang out with our pal in Germany and Austria!
If you'd like to view all of our photos from our visit with Nate, please click on this link:
Nate's Visit Photos
