trace evidence

Well, here we are in Salzburg! And no one has won the contest!

This could be because I forgot to include the link to the hint!

Click on the burgundy words above, scroll down until you see the little box, click in the little box, type "wirt", and hit the button that says either "send," or "search" - I forget what it says. Wait, and scroll down to the definition. When you´re done, you can hit the back button (the left-facing arrow button in the grey part) to get back to this screen.

http://www.ego4u.com/en/dictionary

No, it does not mean "worth" but something else. And happy anniversary to my favourite cousin who lives in Calgary!

I think I know what happened to your posts that "disappeared," Mom - you posted them under a different entry! I just did a search and discovered a whole bunch of comments I´d missed before. Are you doing anything but the computer, Mom?! I guess the instructions worked!

To update the journey, the morning started out with beautiful weather in Vienna, and we travelled to Krems to hop on our boat cruise of the Danube. After waiting in the heat crammed together with little pushy senior citizens and equally pushy bicycle travellers on a little dock (once again, the concept of a line seems foreign to people here), we boarded our cute little cruise ship. The weather was beautiful for the cruise; just enough of a breeze to keep things refreshing. We docked briefly at Dürnstein (didn´t get off the boat) which has to be the cutest village ever - there is a gorgeous blue cathedral right on the water, surrounded by little homes, and above the village on the cliffs are the ruins of a huge castle.

Then we went further to Weissenkirchen (White Church) and disembarked. What took us 55 minutes by boat took our bus driver 20 minutes by bus...but we had the better view! As soon as we got off the boat, it started to cloud over off and on for the rest of the day.

We then visited the Melk Abbey, which was impressive, and stopped at a little cafeteria-style restaurant at a gas station along the highway for lunch. This doesn´t sound impressive, but I guess they have a chain of these restaurants, and this one was in a beautiful country area surrounded by little villages in the distance. Later we stopped at Mondsee which reminded me very much of Leavenworth (the most touristy place we´ve been so far), but had the cathedral which was used for the wedding scenes in The Sound of Music. It doesn´t look as gaudy in the movie as it does in real life. The building itself is very plain - painted pink and white on the inside - but the "extras" they have all around the inside are dark, dark wood and dark, dark paintings...and they´re huge!

Then we went on to Salzburg. It rained along the way, but dried up by the time we got there, although it was still cloudy. The tour guide said that the saying in Salzburg is, "If you can see the castle, it´s going to rain. If you can´t see the castle, it´s raining."

Our hotel room is right by a bunch of train tracks. Luckily, the windows cut a bunch of the sound out, because even with me living near the tracks, the sound of what must have been 15 trains thundering by (just little ones, but they didn´t sound like it!) every 15 minutes was rather deafening.

We went down for dinner in the hotel´s restaurant (salad, boiled beef and potatoes - blech - and curd dumplings with stewed plums - at least the dumplings were ok). Then we went for a walk through the park just prior to 8:00.

You know the scene in The Sound of Music when they are getting married and there are bells ringing everywhere? That´s what Salzburg sounds like. Or at least it did at 8:00. There were bells ringing all over the city for around 10 minutes straight before they rang the bells for the time. It was beautiful. As if on cue, right during that time the sun came out briefly and lit up the cathedral and castle in the distance, which led to some pretty impressive shots of the two landmarks...I wish I could share them with you now! We walked around the fountain pictured in The Sound, walked across a footbridge to the "old" city, and then headed back through the park where a young orchestra was giving a concert right near the fountain mentioned earlier.

Then we went to bed. I´m sure I was asleep by 10:00, which leads me to the realization I just had about 15 minutes ago. What I thought was 5:10 when I got up this morning was actually 2:25. So, here I am typing in the lobby at 3:30 in the morning. I´m sure I´m going to hear from Darrin and his mom when they wake up. And again later. And later after that. At least this gives me lots of time with no one else wanting the computer!

Anyways, I´m wide awake now after four hours of sleep. I´m not too worried, as the anti-motion-sick medicine made me fall asleep several times on the journey yesterday. Today, we are doing a walking tour of the city in the morning, and then taking an excursion to the Eagle´s Nest, of Hitler infamy. Apparently it has wonderful views. We go through the salt mining area as well on this out trip. Then, in the evening, we go for dinner at Helbrunn Castle, a castle known for its "trick" fountains. Water spurts out from unexpected places, apparently!

Well, I should probably head back up to my room and hope they didn´t notice me getting showered etc. in the middle of the night. (I was wondering why the sun hadn´t come up yet!)

Night, and talk to you later!

Trace