To Salzburg

We rose early in the morning to try and get an early start on our drive to Salzburg, Austria. It was going to be a 5 to 6 hour drive, so we left around 9am and hopped right on the autobahn. It was a fairly uneventful trip, but there was a very obvious highlight: about 45 minutes past Munich we encouered some traffic. While in traffic, we came over a hill and caught our first, distant view of the Alps. As we drew closer to Salzburg, the mountains kept growing, culminating in a beautiful towering peak that was capped in snow.

We arrived in a very busy Salzburg without fanfare, having very much enjoyed driving along the northern Alpine border. We directed the GPS to guide us to our hotel, and it did its very best, but ultimately failed. We searched for our hotel for quite a long time, driving around the Old City Center of Salzburg an embarassing amount of time before finally asking at a tourist center and finding that it was nestled away in a little back alley in the Old City, away from the hustle and bustle but close by all the sights and sounds that we wanted to experience. Though the hotel itself was small and the stone staircase was rather unpromising, our room was a nice suite with a beautiful view, superb location, and perfectly acceptable accomodations.

After bringing our luggage in to the room, we moved our car to a parking lot about 10 minute's walk from our hotel; as our hotel was in the Old City, there was no overnight parking nearby. We then proceeded to try and make up for lost time and get some of our walking tour of Salzburg in before dinner. By this time it was around 4:30pm, and some shops had already started to close up. We finally wandered our way in to the Kapitelplatz (completely by accident) and pulled out our trusty Rick Steves'.

After marveling at the beauty of the Kapitelplatz and its view of the Fortress (which, we decided, we would visit tomorrow), we headed in through a series of arches to the Domplatz, which served as the courtyard for the absolutely gorgeous Salzburg Cathedral. Walking into the Cathedral was like walking into a piece of history; consecrated in 1628, this Cathedral was one of the first Baroque buildings north of the Alps. It was commissioned by a greedy prince-archbishop who wanted to turn Salzburg into the Rome of the north, and was only stopped by the existence of a modest cathedral in the center of town. When that cathedral was destroyed, he was more than happy to built a magnificent new one in its place. We were able to see the ruins of the cathedral in the crypt below the church, where several archbishops are buried as well. AS a side note, Mozart himself served as the organist at this cathedral for two years. It will be hard for any Cathedral to top the Salzburg cathedral in its size and splendor, at least on this trip.

We visited two more plazas after exiting the cathedral: the Residenzplatz, with a fountain of Triton that mirrors a similar fountain in Rome, and the Mozartplatz, overlooked by a an 8th century church and centered around a statue of Mozart. It was amazing, walking through the plazas and knowing that people had been walking them for centurys; even Mozart himself had once strode across these uneven bricks.

We finished up the day with a scrumptious meal at Saran Essbar, an international cuisine restaurant tucked away just a block off Mozartplatz. We decided to have traditional Austrian cusine, and so we shared a plate of Schnitzel and a plate of gulash between the five of us, after which we indulged in some apple strudel and some specialty pancakes.