Salzburg, Austria: Part 2

I just spent the morning going through all the photos I have from our Salzburg weekend (all 802 of them!) and I love way too many of them just to share two posts. Old Town is gorgeous and full of such incredible history, but the mountainous landscape surrounding the city is simply breathtaking. The Austrian Alps are truly an item that should be on everyone's bucket list. If you can ski the Alps, that's the ideal way to go, but experiencing the views of such an iconic city juxtaposed against snow capped mountains is a great compromise. I went photo crazy our morning at Salzburg Castle. It was so hard not to! The clouds and fog from the early morning were still lingering along the base of the mountain range when we got to the castle's vista. As the day progressed, the fog dissipated and we got totally different Alpine views. It was unbelievable (I'll share more in my next post). Until then...here are a few more photos of the Old Town leading up to our funicular ride.

 I have to admit, aside from watching the mountain scenery change with the day, one of the coolest things we did while in Salzburg was ride the funicular from Old Town up to Fortress Hohensalzburg (Salzburg Castle). We are big fans of "getting high" and seeing cities from the highest vantage point we can easily get to. I always recommend taking this approach when visiting a new city. Such a great way to get your bearings and be wowed at the same time! You can take the funicular round-trip for 8 euro, or you can combine your ride with a castle tour (what we did) for 11.30 euro. Such a perfect way to spend half a day in Salzburg!

More from Salzburg Castle to come...

Miss any of my Salzburg recaps? Catch up here!

The Hills Are Alive: Salzburg Part 1

This time last year, D and I hopped in a car with two of our friends and made our way to Salzburg for a totally Austrian weekend. Austria was one of those countries we always kind of forgot about. Even though its borders were just 6 short hours away from our home in Wiesbaden, Austria is so similar to Germany that we often chose to venture off to other destinations around Germany. When the time to leave our life abroad started to creep closer, we knew there were a few iconic cities we needed to check off our bucket list before leaving Europe. Salzburg was high on our list.

As the birthplace of Mozart and Rodgers and Hammerstein's cinematic treasure, The Sound of Music, Salzburg runs no shortage of historic sights and beautiful landscapes. Our weekend was chock full of "wow!" moments and diving straight into the pages of my college art history textbook. We decided to stay just across the river from historic Salzburg, placing our home-base at a hotel with a view of the Mirabell Garden & Palace gates. After checking in late on a Friday night, we woke early Saturday morning, drank cappucinos at the bakery below the hotel, and started our tour of Salzburg with Mirabellgarten (open year-round). None of the boys were interested in doing the whole Sound of Music bus tour, so us gals settled for strolling around the gardens singing and pretending we were part of the Von Trapp family. Really a surreal start to our day of sight-seeing.

After strolling the gardens, we made our way across the Salzach River to wander around historic Salzburg. Along our walk, you could see Fortress Hohensalzburg towering over the city, and gorgeous mountain-scapes hovering over every ounce of visible skyline. To live in a city completely surrounding by beautiful mountains? That's the dream. 

Baroque architecture reins supreme in Salzburg and the city oozes a fun blend of opulence and kitsch as you wander along its narrow streets. I'm a sucker for wrought iron signage and elaborate facades, so Getreidegasse (popular shopping street) was a total dream to me. We spent quite a lot of time going in and out of shops, tasting marzipan, trying on traditional dirndls/lederhosen, and tasting local schnapps at Sporer (highly recommend a pop in--smooth as buttah, that stuff!). It was so easy to lose track of time there! Salzburg is such a friendly city, the locals really embraced us and made us all feel welcome (especially where schnapps and beer were involved!). After getting our fill of shopping, we decided we needed to "get high"...so off to the castle we went!

More from gorgeous Salzburg to come!