Being musical theatre obsessed, Salzburg was of course a must-stop city. For once we arrived during day time and had time to see the sights as soon as we arrived. Sadly we had arrived on Sunday which meant not much was open. Little did we know Monday was some other special non-opening day so many of the tourist attractions (eg the museum and the mozarthaus) were shut.
We did manage to get up the steepest cable car track I have ever seen and explored Festung Hohensalzburg, an enormous fortress on the top of a mountain. Why the bishops thought they would ever be invaded up there I'll never know, but even if you made it up the sheer cliffs you still had insane walls to deal with as well as deathly defense structures.
Despite my love of the sound of music we saw very little from the film. It seems to be dotted all over greater Salzburg and the tour is four hours, which we didn't have in one chunk. I did see Nonnberg Abbey which is not only in the film but is the actual abbey that the true Maria von Trapp was at.
We did manage to have an exquisite dinner in the oldest restaurant in Europe which for an exorbitant fee you can have with you own private-ish opera show. In a ballroom with a string quintet we listened and watched excerpts from Die Zäuberflöte, Don Giovanni and Le Nozze di Figaro. The singers walked among the audience and acted out the songs so it was fairly easy to work out what was going on.
The next morning we continued our tour of gingerbread (made with honey and surprisingly crunchy) and then caught the train to Innsbruck and then to St Anton am Arlberg. Amazingly the train was 40 minutes late, which you don't expect in Germany or Austria. We have managed to get here safely in any case, and now I am too tired to ski.
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