We got up and had breakfast and then we headed out the door by 9:30. This is what a typical breakfast looked like for me: scrambled eggs, a roll of some sort, cheese (the white stuff underneath the roll), sausage, juice, and yogurt with muesli on top.
We walked to Old Town through Mirabell Gardens, which is the same place where the VonTrapp kids sing "Do Re Mi". This is the part of the gardens that looks like a regular park.
This is the Salzach River with Old Town Salzburg on the other side. At the top of the mountain you can see the Hohensalzburg Fortress.
This is looking up the Salzach River. As you can see by the hills, the river, and green grass and the sky, it was beautiful in Salzburg.
Just like I took too many pictures of unknown statues in Budapest, I took way too many pictures of the churches around Salzburg. Salzburg is known as the Rome of Austria because it has 38 Catholic churches there with a population of just 150,000 people. And just like I don't remember the names of the statues in Budapest, I don't remember what the names of all of the churches I took pictures of in Salzburg.
This is Blasiuskirche ("kirche" is German for "church").
This is what a typical street in Old Town Salzburg looks like. Not much has changed since the 1700s, and some streets are so narrow that cars can't go through.
Salzburg was once its own independent state, ruled by bishops. One of the bishop's names was Leopold, and he was quite fond of horses. He had 1500 horses, and he built this huge building to house them and this lovely little pool that he ran the horses through to bathe them.
This tunnel is over 250 years old. One of the bishop's thought it would be much easier to go through the hill than go around it.
This is the University of Salzburg, established in 1623. Our Sound of Music tour guide told us Leopold Mozart, father of Wolfgang, was a student here.
This is the Franciscan Church:
Across from the Franciscan church was Kohlmarkt, where the local nuns and priests were having a flea market. We spoke to this lovely nun, Sister Patricia (Pa-tree-see-a) and took the obligatory walk around the flea market, knowing that we weren't going to buy anything because we're not flea market people, but wanting to see what was for sale. It was the hip-happening place to be!
I have no idea what church this is, but it's lovely, isn't it?
This is the Salzburg Cathedral. You can see that the square in front of it (called Domplatz) was already hopping with people for the St. Rupert's Festival.
This is looking up the hill to the fortress. You could ride a funicular up to the top, but Rick Steves said the view was worth it, but the museum wasn't.
It was hard not to get immediately sucked into the festival while we were looking at all the Old Town Salzburg sights because the festival was RIGHT THERE. We did have to stop at this little booth to buy some gummy treats for the kids. Haribo gummies come from Germany, but they're also sold in the U.S. at our groceries stores. You'd probably recognize their gummy bear packaging because it's gold-colored. Anyway, this was a Haribo booth, and as you can see, they had lots of gummies to choose from!
This is Residenzplatz, with the festival rides set up in the middle:
You can't wander through Salzburg without seeing a statue of Mozart! Residents here say it's a poor likeness of Mozart. I learned from touring his residence (more on that later) that he didn't really like Salzburg and kept trying to move away from it.
This is the Church of the Cajetans:
I really wanted to keep walking because I wanted to see the convent were Maria VonTrapp nearly took her vows. It's a bit out of Old Town and you have to walk up a lot of stairs because it sits up at the top of a hill (with incredible views of Salzburg. I was glad I didn't ride the funicular up to the fortress because the convent had such good views!)
The convent itself (Nonnberg Priory) was quite small and it was hard to get a good picture of it because it was on a hill overlooking the city.
That's the convent on the right, and the fortress above it.
Inside the grounds of the convent were these lovely little graves of some of the sisters who served at the convent.
We walked back down the steps from the convent and stayed close to the mountain on our way to St. Peter's church. On the way there I saw my first brothel, red lights glowing and all!
Do you recognize these gates? Remember when the VonTrapp family escaped from the music festival and went to the convent to hide from the Nazis? Remember how they hid in the cemetery behind grave gates? These are the gates at the cemetery at St. Peter's church. The Sound of Music movie producers frequently did this: portray the convent as the place where the family hid, but it was really a different location in town.
These next pictures are of the rest of the grounds at St. Peter's church. Just like at the convent, these are the graves of priests and nuns who served here.
This is the exterior of St. Peter's Abbey, which is not open to the public.
This is the interior of St. Peter's church.
Inside the church, there were several paintings devoted to different saints. This is the painting asking St. Rupert to pray for the congregation. This St. Rupert is the same St. Rupert that the festival is named after. He was the first bishop of Salzburg.
On our way out of Old Town and back across the river to the marionette theater, we walked through the festival. I could have spent days there just eating the food! They had booths dedicated solely to pretzels, which are some of my favorite things. I got this pretzel-shaped pastry that was covered in chocolate. It was as good as it looks!
We went to the 2 p.m. showing of The Magic Flute at the Marionettentheater. I think we offended some of our fellow patrons when we sat down in our assigned seats, realized that there were many other seats that were open and away from people, and moved to them. To be fair to us (specifically, to me), the dude next to me was not only incredibly tall and leggy and intruding on my personal space, but he also had some kickin' B.O. Oh well - we'll never see them again!
The show itself was only an hour long, but it was very cute and well-done, and it was fun to see how they'd made the marionettes seem so big on the stage, when really, they were just regular-sized dolls. They opened up the full curtain at the end so we could see the people that were controlling the marionettes, and that's when we got a good feel for just how small the dolls were.
This was Mozart's residence for 7 years. Rick Steves said that it was a site well worth seeing, but I was highly disappointed that I paid 7 Euros to tour it. My mom wisely chose to sit outside while I toured it. I think it took me all of 15 minutes to go through it, and another 20 minutes to watch the movie. No pictures allowed inside.
Back to St. Rupert's festival (despite my mom's wishes...sorry, Mom!) How can you have this awesome festival and not try to get the most out of it???
You can't have a festival without a weird painted guy pretending to be Mozart:
Okay, I'll admit it: the real reason why I wanted to go back to the festival was that it was our last day in Austria and I still hadn't eaten a hot dog from a street vendor. That was one of my goals. I dragged my mom through the whole festival, searching for a stupid hot dog place. I finally found one, but it was like I had "AMERICAN" stamped on my forehead because even when I was first in line, the server totally ignored me and gave the next hot dog to the girl next to me, who clearly was no even in line. Luckily, she was nice enough and helped me figure out what a "zwiebel" hot dog was, and when the server gave her the hot dog instead of me, she politely gave it to me.
So, here it is, my zwiebel hot dog: a bun with not 1, but 2 hot dogs in it, a generous portion of dijon mustard, grilled onions, covered in curry powder. First off, I'm not much of a mustard person. Secondly, I'm not sure if I'm a curry person, either. But, surprisingly enough, despite the seemingly nasty combination, it was a pretty rockin' dog. (And no, my mom didn't have one. She isn't adventurous like me.)
We walked around while I ate my hot dog, and as we were walking, we passed the pretzel stand again. I had to get another one! This is considered a small pretzel compared to the one I'd had the previous day, which was gigantic and so delicious.
I think my obsession with festival food about had my mom at her breaking point. I nearly pushed her over the edge when I suggested we try and find a seat and watch the performances that were about to start. I found us a table next to some old Austrian ladies who spoke no English, but still tried to talk to me and even shoo'd people away who got in front of me when I was trying to take pictures.
I was so glad we stayed for the performances, and secretly I think my mom was, too. We saw the cutest little kids dance together, teenage boys slapping their knees and feet, a couple singing German songs, and these guys that made music from cracking whips (it was so loud!) I'm glad we got to take in some Austrian culture!
This is the poster advertising St. Rupert's festival:
Here's a random church on the way back to our hotel. The chocolate company Milka (very popular in Austria) was doing a little mini-festival of their own. Too bad they'd already closed down when we walked by or I would have been all over it.
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