The trip to Salzburg by bus wasn’t too bad, it only lasted about three and a half hours. Instantly Gabriel and I started singing songs from “The Sound of Music”… at least the bits and pieces we could remember. We always think of Jamie DiGulio, a great friend of ours, when we start to sing. I bet she would have loved to come here with us. We arrived in Salzburg around 7PM and unfortunately when we booked the hotel we thought it was a little closer to the central station, so we had to walk about a fifteen minute walk. The hotel was a small bed and breakfast in a nice and quiet little area on the outer part of the city. It was so small that there was just a phone at check-in and a note telling us to call a number, and a lady on the phone said our key was in a drawer behind the desk…. WEIRD. Most of the hotels did not have A/C here in Salzburg so there weren’t many places to pick from, and if you know Gabriel and I, you know we love our A/C.

After showering and getting ready for dinner we called for a taxi to take us into the old town and enjoyed a wonderful dinner at The Glamorous Monkey. Food and wine was wonderful. I started up with a creamy potato soup that wasn’t too thick (more brothy), with bacon and whipped cream topping, and ended with a beef tip brew with a dumpling in brown gravy. No way of me to describe what Gabriel got, other then it looked like a fried pork chop with zucchini, fried mozzarella on the bottom and topped with a slice of ham and lettuce – it also looked wonderful. After dinner we took a great stroll through the old town and headed back to the B&B for a nice night sleep.

Next day we woke up, ate a small breakfast and headed out the door to the fortress on the hill. I kept calling it a castle until we took the walk around the museums and learned it was just an old fortress (Festung Hohensalzburg). Everywhere there were amazing views of the city and of the whole region, and we found a nice restaurant were Gabriel enjoyed a nice Salzburg beer and myself a glass of white wine while sharing a pretzel. I haven’t mentioned much about the pretzels here in the Bavarian region and surroundings, but they are the best in the world (the malls back at home have nothing on these delicious things).

After leaving the fortress, we headed to the Maribell gardens where we enjoyed the gorgeous landscape and had a great time mimicking the funny statues around the place (I will let the pictures tell you this story). Hahahaha.

Later that night we went into town and ate at this little brew house called Zwettler’s. When we got there they couldn’t seat us outside because they thought it was about to rain, so they put us at a large table with two other older Austrian men that were super nice. Gabriel wanted to run to the bathroom and asked me to order us a beer but what he didn’t know was I ordered the largest beer I have had in my life (it was bigger than our heads). I decided to order the Käsespätzle (Bavarian mac and cheese) that Gabriel had previously had in Munich and I just thought that sounded so good, while Gabriel ordered a meal with two meat patties and mashed potatoes on top of a beer gravy… his meal was way better than mine.