Full Salzburg Day

Congratulations to Bingo Lady for winning the contest...yes, wirt means host! However, it is not determined if it is Bingo Lady number one or number two...the message wasn´t signed.

Also, please try VERY hard to put your post after the top-most message so I don´t have to search for them. I´m sometimes limited on time!

Yesterday, we did a city tour (walking) in the morning with Veronika as our guide. Lots of the shop owners and guides wear traditional Austrian clothing. She showed us around the city including inside the Dom Cathedral, which is beautiful even without any stained glass anywhere. We also walked through the cemetery where the Von Trapps hid in the movie (although they couldn´t actually have hidden there, as there is nothing to hide behind!). We also saw Mozart´s birthplace, statue, house where he grew up, and lots of other Mozart memorabilia. It was drizzling off and on throughout the day.

After the city tour we walked around on our own through the "old city" (the "new city" is only 400 years old) and I bought a hand-embroidered little tablecloth. It might be too expensive to use as a cover for the bird cage (!), but we´ll see! (It really wasn´t that expensive!)

In the afternoon we went to the Eagle´s Nest (in Germany; we passed through Bavaria), the only part of the Nazi headquarters that was not bombed to smithereens. It was too bad that it was foggy as you couldn´t see the view, but the historical part was very interesting. Some parts along the drive we were on the edge of the mountain and you couldn´t see anything but white on the open side past five feet away! You still knew it was a long way down, though!

For dinner we went to a little restaurant in the outskirts of Salzburg (where I saw a car with a designer license plate "HA WIRT 1" - yes I took a picture!) whose food was a lot better than the night before, and then we went to Hellbrunn Castle, which is an amazing place. Some archbishop with a lot of money and a cruel sense of humour built it for fun just so he could tease his guests. There are surprises around every corner, including trick fountains that could be coming from anywhere! The technology was amazing, considering it was built 400 years ago and was just powered by water coming down from the mountain.

Anyways, I should be going, as we need to have breakfast and leave to go on to St. Moritz. We stop along the way there to go for a horse-drawn carriage ride up to a glacier.

Don´t know when I´ll write next!

Later,

Trace