The Hills Are Alive... In Salzburg

Day 9:

We had a hard time finding our hostel the day before (Day 8), but when we finally got there we met up with another group of Riva girls and all hung out that night talking about our trips thus far. We all went to bed relatively early because we had to get up early the following day.

When we woke up that next day (Day 9), we went downstairs to get ourselves some breakfast at the hostel. I had a really good roll with honey! (And since then, I've loved eating that combo whenever there is honey around.) But I had to slightly rush to get ready and eat because our main event of the day was: The Sound of Music Tour! When in Salzburg, that's basically a must right?

We traveled by bus around to different Sound of Music sights in Salzburg, with our tour meeting right outside the Mirabell Gardens (which we had time to explore later in the day). We got on the bus clearly for The Sound of Music tour. After settling into our seats, we were met by an intensively enthusiastic guide for the day's tour. Literally I felt like this man must have drank 5 cups of coffee before getting on the bus haha he tried to lead us in sing-a-longs and was dancing around... it didn't bother me, I just thought it was funny. But most importantly he was knowledgeable about the Sound of Music and the spots we went to so that is what's important.

As we were heading to our first stop, we passed by the Salzburg Mozart Bridge which apparently there was a small scene filmed on the bridge (which I can't seem to remember).

But anyways, our first stop was Leopoldskron Palace. This is where the famous boating scene was filmed, plus the Captain's backyard and private palace garden. (The palace in the background was NOT the Captain's house in the film, this site was only used for the lake and backyard).

 

But also at this site on the opposite side of the lake is the Untersberg Mountain where Maria sang the opening scene to the film "The hills are alive with the sound of music..." It was so beautiful on this lake, I could have easily stayed much longer.

We got back on the bus after this brief stop and on our way to the next stop we saw the incredible Hohensalzburg Fortress. One of the largest fully preserved castle complexes in Europe!

But the next stop we got off and walked around is from a scene I think anyone who's seen the movie would remember, and even if they haven't seen the movie most people have heard this song. "You are sixteen, going on seventeen..." That's right! The gazebo where Rofl and Liesl sang there famous song. Also the same spot with the kissing scene between Maria and Baron Von Trapp. Although the gazebo had to be rebuilt, it now rests in Hellbrunn Palace.

 

After all making sure we got cute pictures by the gazebo, we got back on the bus and were offered refreshments. I had some type of traditional soda pop. It tasted a bit like ginger ale mixed with apple; it was quite good!! Now we had a longer bus between our next stop than the previous one, so our tour guide kept us entertained by pointing out different things along the way and telling pretty corny jokes... "What did the man with only one side of his body say when asked how he was?" "I'm all right" ha ha ha

We took a quick stop at a spectacular view of the mountains and lake region of Salzburg with a little town along the banks. It was a perfect day with clear skies and warm enough not to wear a jacket! Again it was the best time to be in Salzburg, the trees were stunningly bright and colorful.

Here's what I was perhaps disappointed about with the tour. It said we were going to stop at Nonnberg Abbey... but there's no way the bus pausing for 5 seconds should be considered an actual stop. I thought we were going to be able to get off and walk through for a little bit, but I guess not. Anyways this is the best picture I could get.

And what is this following picture? It's the actual sight of the Von Trapp family house during the film. I guess I assumed on The Sound of Music Tour we would get to at least walk up to the house if we weren't able to go inside. But no :( We drove by and the guide pointed out of the house, but it was covered mostly by trees. I wish I had been told ahead of time about not being able to see the house, I think then I wouldn't have been disappointed.

It wasn't the biggest deal though, I still had one other major site to see on the tour! And that took us to the town of Mondsee. There we got to go into the famous church where the wedding of Maria and Baron von Trapp was filmed in the movie.

After exploring the inside of the church and saying a couple of prayers, we had some extra time in this little town. We got recommendations to try the apple strudel with vanilla sauce, so you can bet where we all went next! It was a small restaurant in the town and we all got apple strudel. So so good! It was nice to chat together too :)

 After the strudel break, I did a little shopping for souvenirs... but everything was so overpriced! The Sound of Music has become a definite tourist trap. Nothing was worth the prices they were asking for simple things. But on the way back to the bus, I happened to spot such a magical site! A natural tree canopy! The brightest green color with sunlight falling through the leaves, it was like a dream...

On the ride back to the Mirabell Gardens, we heard more about the story of the Real Von Trapp family. It should not have come as much of a surprise that Hollywood fabricated a lot of the story and changed it to ways they saw fit. For example, take the ending of the book. The closing scene has the Von Trapp family climbing the Untersberg to freedom!... except the other side of the Untersberg goes into Germany and isn't that the opposite way the family wanted to go? The actual Von Trapp family took a train to Italy before finally making it to the US and settling in Vermont. Two very different stories I would say. I remember them saying the real Maria Von Trapp was extremely upset about Hollywood's version, but a healthy sum of money apparently kept her quiet. But the true family was indeed singers and did win competitions for their singing abilities. They traveled around America singing and then had people visit them in Vermont to hear them. 

When the bus ride back came to a close, we got off at the Mirabell Gardens to explore. Unfortunately it was pretty crowded, but I had fun imagining the children skipping around the fountain signing "Doe, a deer, a female deer. Ray, a drop of golden sun..." and running underneath the canopied path. They also posed with the statues at the end of the gardens, as we replicated haha.

And that about wraps up my Sound of Music part of the day. For the rest of the afternoon, we just relaxed. Not too much on our agenda so we took our time walking around. We went to the Salzburg Old Town area, going in and out of shops along the way. We all ate a soft pretzel as snack before dinner. Later we took a walk by the river running through Salzburg and enjoyed the lovely day. After a while, we went to the Augustiner-Brau Hall to get dinner and have a beer. (Sound familar? The building is the same name as the Oktoberfest tent I was in, expect that was a completely different rowdy atmosphere haha!) I was going to get some type of traditional food, but when it came to deciding what to eat I just wanted vegetables. It's hard to eat healthy on these trips, and that's all I felt I could eat after this 10 day. But I did get potato wedges on the side... still kind of a vegetable right?...

But from there it was time to go back to our hostel and grab our bags. We'd be heading on our final train journey back to Riva. I never like leaving any of the cities I visit, and Salzburg is no exception to that. What made Salzburg so great was the gorgeous day outside; sunshine always makes any day better :) The Sound of Music tour was really fun even though I wish I could have seen other Sound of Music sites as well. Walking around afterwards was an enjoyable relaxing way to see more of the city and end our time in Salzburg.

But we had our overnight train with 4 different train changes ahead of us. Our other option was a train all day Sunday to get home. We decided we'd rather just deal with the annoyance of changing trains at night so we could relax all day Sunday. With some scary close calls and confusion, we managed to catch all our trains on time and made it home safely!

Day 10:

Sleep.

Haha but really I did sleep most of the day. And later on I got prepared for class the next day as well.

This 10 day trip was very different than the previous one. We were in a whole different region of Europe and it was much colder. That being said I had such an awesome time! Every place was as unique as the last one and I loved that. I also felt more relaxed and confident in my abilities as a traveler. I traveled with different groups throughout this 10 day and enjoyed the variety of personalities I was with. Really could not have asked for much more; it was a great trip :)

Vienna: The Remarkable Capital of Austria

Day 8:

After getting a rough night of sleep due to the loudest, snoring, and rude roommates, we got a nice big breakfast at our hostel. Since we didn’t even have a full day in Vienna (just the way our trip worked out) we had to figure out the best way to see such a big city. Let me repeat… BIG! Vienna is a huge city and we thought what would work best to see it all was to do a bus tour!

The hostel we stayed in was very conveniently located close to the main city center. We took a quick walk to where the bus tour picked up and then hopped on!

The amount of things we got to see during this tour was incredible… we saw the State Opera House, Museum of Fine Arts and the Natural History Museum, Parliament, City Hall, Burgtheater, University, Stock Exchange, Prater, UNO City, St. Stephan's Cathedral,  Stadtpark, Beethovenplatz, St. Charles Square, Albertina, and several other things.

Albertina

                   City Hall

 

Danube River

                   Parliament

 

Hofburg Palace

St. Francis of Assisi Church

When the tour was done, we were pretty hungry. We heard during the tour of recommendations of places to get quality wiener schnitzel!! I had never had it before and expected it to be in the shape of a sausage. Well once we got to Gast Haus Poschl and got our plate of wiener schnitzel, I was quite surprised! It really is a thin piece of meat (usually veal) that is breaded and deep fried. It was served with a cold plate of well seasoned potatoes.

 We then walked back to a couple of the sites. We went back to St. Stephen's Cathedral to go inside. The inside was impressive, with high columns and arches, but I thought the best part was actually the design outside. One section of the roof was beautifully decorated with zig-zagging tiles and a massive bell tower.

 

Afterwards we took a stroll on the main pedestrian walkway, Kärntner Strasse. There are lots of high end shops mixed with little souvenir shops and an abundance of restaurants. It was wonderful weather outside, walking was quite enjoyable. 

We went back to the State Opera House and looked around there for a bit.  It was there we realized we had taken hardly any pictures of ourselves in Vienna. Since the State Opera House is a very famous sight, we took a quick pic here! And then with ourselves under the trees lining the main street! haha

At this point it was time to head back to our hostel to pick up our backpacks before going to the train station for our train to Salzburg! This train was only about 2 hours which was a nice short train for a change.

But before the train, we needed a little food of course! Conveniently right outside our hostel was a Chinatown market! I got amazing vegetable lo mein from one of the vendors! How funny I was eating Chinese food, but it was such a great change of pace.

I reflected on my day in Vienna while on the train. Even though I was only there for a day, we still got to see a good portion of the city. I had no idea how big this capital city would be, but I really loved it! The whole city was very clean and the buildings so grand. I guess since I'm use to being in DC back home, this kind of reminded me of it and I felt at ease. It's unfortunate I didn't get to spend more time here, but the time I did get here was truly great!

Prague (Prahaha) Czech Republic

Our second destination of the 10 day was Prague!! (or Praha as it is called in the Czech Republic... so naturally we added an extra "ha" at the end) And the overnight train was a much better experience than the overnight I took from Lisbon to Madrid because this time we got couchettes! The four of us were in our own little sleeper car… key word: little! It was fine for me, but I couldn’t imagine my tall brother being able to fit in these little beds!

But I actually got a good night sleep because I was very tired and when we got off in Prague I felt well rested.

We got off our train and had to take the metro to our hostel… but we didn’t have any koruna (the Czech Republic currency) on us. Thankfully beforehand I had tentatively calculated how much I would need for the amount of time we were there. I got out 2,000-koruna!! … equivalent to just a little over $100 US dollars. It’s about 19-koruna for 1 US dollar. Very crazy how much different that currency is. So from the ATM I got two 1,000 bills! Haha I felt so rich :D But it also didn’t seem like real money, like I was playing a game of monopoly or something.

Well trying to get on the metro, it clearly didn’t except 1,000 koruna (the ride I believe was about 24) So we had to go to the coffee shop in the train station to break up the bills and get coins… man those workers were not happy with us. And another interesting thing, I got back coins worth 10, 20, and 50-koruna! Back in the US it only goes up to $1 coins. Their whole currency was interesting to me, and I kept a 20-koruna coin at the end because it’s so cool looking. And it’s only about $1!

Anyways, once on the metro we had no problem finding our hostel. It’s so nice that I’ve had experience with using the metro in DC because all the European metros are set up the same way!

Our hostel was very nice for a change! We all needed to take a shower before doing any exploring of the city because we felt kinda gross after that overnight train.

Once we were all ready we had a couple of stops we wanted to see this first day… first one being the Lennon Wall! A wall full of graffiti… but “uplifting” graffiti I would call it. Full of names, peace signs, drawings of Lennon, the word “Imagine”, and other famous sayings by him. It was awesome to see such an iconic sight and a great way to start off our sight seeing. The Lennon Wall was just so big and full of life! Of course being girls we all took turns having a mini photo shoot ;)

Once satisfied with all our pictures, we were going to cross over the famous Charles Bridge to get into Old Town Prague. The bridge was crowded with people, but it was such a neat bridge! All along the sides were statues and at opposing ends there were towers.

And in the middle of the bridge was a fantastic view of the water, brightly colored fall leaves, and part of the city!! It looks a bit gray outside in the pictures, but we really did luck out with a beautiful day! And for the most part it was sunny :)

Okay before seeing anything else, first thing was first: food! We looked for places to eat and we knew what we had to try... Döner Kebabs! 

So unless you've seen what they look like, you don't really know what to expect. Well it's essentially a vertical slab of meat and they shave the meet off the pole. That meat gets mixed with other condiments and becomes a sandwich, wrap, or whatever the restaurant offers. Despite that it looks gross, I had to try one and it was actually so so good! (but I will say besides Prague, I have not had another Döner Kebab... I think the 2 times I had it in Prague was enough for me)

Once we had full bellies, we headed on our way to Old Town Prague. It was the medieval settlement of Prague and is now one of the main city centers. I enjoyed walking around this area and seeing the different types of building structures.

We left the Old Town area and went to the Jewish quarters of Prague. I think we saw about 3 or 4 synagogues all just around the corner from one another. We also saw Prague's Old Jewish Cemetery. The grave stones we're all crammed together and crooked, I wondered what the story behind this place was... well I found out that it was decided to build over the cemetery with more cemeteries. It actually has 11 cemeteries stacked on top of each other. Talk about creepy.

 The last place we went that day was Wenceslas Square, also known as New Town Prague. Full of shops and restaurants, it was a fun place to walk around during dusk. There was also a little food market area here and we saw something we had never seen before! These spiral pastries being baked on poles. It looked too good and too interesting to pass up, so we had to try it out! It was dough wrapped around the poles and since the outside was being hit by the fire, this part was crisp while the inside dough was soft. Sweetened with toffee, sugar, and cinnamon!

We hung out for some time in this area, just chilling and going into different stores. Before long, it got dark and it was time for us to begin our night plans. We were doing the international pub crawl so we went to the first bar to meet up with the group running it! It ended up being such a fun time! :) We went to 2 different bars before ending at a 5 story dance club that also had an ice bar underground! After spending some time on the different floors, we went into the ice bar! It so cool (but literally cool... it was freezing! haha we were only allowed to stay in there for 20 minutes because of the danger of our body temperatures dropping too drastically!) But it was an awesome set up and a great time!

Thankfully the pub crawl ended pretty close to our hostel so we were able to walk home no problem and got some good sleep!

Day 7:

Apparently breakfast in Prague isn't really a thing. After asking several people where we could get breakfast and all of them saying they didn't know of a place we could get breakfast food, we had to sadly settle for going to McDonald's for a quick bite to eat. 

Then came time for our big (and only) plan of the day: Prague Castle!! We took the trolley 3 different directions before finally figuring it out and making it to the castle. From outside the castle gates we could already see parts from the inside and excited to see it all!

Once inside the castle gates, there is so much to see!! 

The first place we went to was St. Vinci Cathedral and I was blown away. I don't like naming favorites, but this was immediately one of my favorite cathedrals. The outside is dramatically stunning and the inside is just as beautiful! It has my favorite type of stain glass: the hundreds of little solid color pieces forming the large big picture! Oh I can't describe how amazing it is. The two stand out pieces of stain glass were the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost behind the altar and on the opposite side near the organ was what I best describe as a large colorful snowflake. I didn't want to leave the cathedral, but we had other places to explore.

We then went into the Old Royal Palace. It was mostly a vacated area, but it was still fun to walk through and picture what it would have been like. We walked through the main hall, saw the private rooms, the crown jewels, extremely old books of records, and the throne room. 

Our next stop within the Castle Hill gates was St. George's Basilica. This church was super old and most of the paintings on the walls were very faded, but it was relaxing inside. It wasn't a huge site, so it was nice to sit in the pews for a while and give my legs a little break from walking around.

Afterwards we strolled through Golden Lane! It is 11 historic houses, which now are set up in a way as to show the life of the artisans who once worked, ate, drank and slept in them in the 15th century. For example, some of the set ups I remember were a little infirmary, a soldiers house, a tavern, and even a psychic's house. Above the houses is an armory area full of rows upon rows of ancient body armor, helmets, shields, battle axes and swords, medieval torture devices, and other tools. (Unfortunately everything was encased in glass and it was hard to get a good picture with the glare). I had a pleasant time going in and out of these small houses and seeing the armory (although the torture devices freaked me out!)

The last stop within the castle gates was the prison tower. That included a lot more freaky torture devices and creepy cages for people. It was an unusual sight to see, but I was glad to leave that spot. I couldn't imagine what those unfortunate people had to endure. 

As the name implies, Castle Hill is on top of a large hill overlooking the city of Prague. When we left the gates, we saw a gorgeous view of the city!!

Plus as an added bonus to this beautiful day, we picked the perfect season to visit Prague! Fall in Prague is the best, the leaves are radiating bursts of color. I was in awe and felt so blessed to be there.

 

 Reluctantly I left because we did have a train to catch in a little bit. But before we left, I had the chance to try chips on a spiral stick? haha I'm not sure, I'd never seen it before! But it was so soft and salty, a nice little snack. I then did a brief shopping trip since I had just a small amount of koruna left and then ended my time with one last view on Charles Bridge. The icing on the cake of my time in Prague.

It got time to head to the train station for a 6 hour train to Vienna that would have us arriving late in the evening. We had a bit of a struggle getting to the train station in Prague, but what's important is we made it on time!

When I imagined this trip long before I even got to Europe, I never thought I’d end up in the Czech Republic! Yet that’s where I found myself! I came in with no expectations; I had no clue what to expect… and I think that’s possibly what led Prague to be another one of my favorite places because it took me by surprise. It’s a beautiful city with an interesting culture and history. I hope I have the opportunity to come back to Prague in the future.