Salzburg, Austria

Sunday 4th July: Our last full day in Salzburg.

What a relief it was to see some cloud cover when we woke this morning; a reprieve from the heat of the last three days. Our plan for the day was to hang around the Altstadt for the morning and visit some Museums and then to take a Bavarian Mountain & Salt Mine tour in the afternoon. Salzburg derived its name from the humble compound ‘salt’, as did the river bisecting the township. Salt has been ‘mined’ in the area since as early as 500BC and the early town and Bishopric derived its wealth from the sale of salt.

Thus, we headed off to book the tour after breakfast and then on to find a café for Mark’s morning espresso. Mozart’s House was en route so we stopped off there for a visit. It was quite a buzz to stroll through the same rooms that this genius had done so many years before. We then made a quick stop at both the Museum of Modern Art, perched up on top of the mountain, and at the Museum of Natural History. From there we headed back to the river Salzach to take a 40 min river cruise before heading off to find a café for lunch and picking up our afternoon tour.

The Salt Mine was quite amazing; an incredible investment of money on infrastructure and, all for the humble table salt. We couldn’t quite understand how the set up could be financially viable these days. Having said that though, the Augustinian Brewery must be one of their main clients based on the BBQ chicken and other food items that they sell in the beer garden!

It was only a short walk back to the brewery after the drop off from our afternoon tour….how convenient! As per before, Mark marched onward and upward leading the way to the steins. At least we managed to find where they sold salad items this time. The place was again full of locals with only a few tourists. We reflected on our stay in Salzburg and wished that we had more time here. It is certainly a place that we would happily re-visit. Prague was beautiful but, we’ve seen it and that’s fine. Salzburg, though, is almost in the same category as Paris, Rome and NY for us: on the ‘to do’ list again for some time in the future….even though the over use of consonants still does my head in!

Tomorrow we head off to Ortisei, high up in the Italian Alps….. yodelay…yodelay…yodelay&#82 30;.