Starting with Salzburg

It's been a busy few weeks.  I had a conference to attend in Salzburg in late August, so M and I went early to spend the weekend there together.  It was an easy three-hour train ride and we got there before noon. I don't think we realized (until we got there) that the Salzburg Festival was going on.  It's a very charming town, quite proud of being the birthplace of Mozart.  It is also clear why parts of the Sound of Music were filmed in and around Salzburg.

First, a bit of geography (from Wikipedia):
Salzburg is on the banks of the Salzach River, at the northern boundary of the Alps. The mountains to Salzburg's south contrast with the rolling plains to the north. The closest alpine peak—the 1972 m Untersberg—is only a few kilometres from the city centre. The Altstadt, or "old town", is dominated by its baroque towers and churches and the massive Festung Hohensalzburg. This area is surrounded by two smaller mountains, the Mönchsberg and Kapuzinerberg, which act as the green lungs of the city. Salzburg is approximately 150 km east of Munich, 281 km northwest of Ljubljana, and 300 km west of Vienna.


Here is the layout - with the river in the middle (taken from the Hohensalzburg Fortress):


The Old Town (or Altstadt) is in the foreground.


To take that photo, we had to get up here:

 

But from here:

 Instead of walking up from the bottom of the fortress, or even taking the funicular, we started our walk from pretty far away. We saw some lovely things along our hike:

A cool drink for a hot day.

 Getting closer....

We're finally up there.

The ceiling of the Golden Hall (where we saw an evening chamber music concert):

We took the funicular down.

Whew!  Onto lunch at Stiftskeller St. Peter (Established 803 AD - The Stiftskeller St. Peter was first documented in 803 AD in documents by the scholar Alkuin, a follower of Charlemagne, thereby providing proof for the status of being the oldest known hostelry in Central Europe).

 

We found a wonderful place for Prosecco.

After M left, I explored more of Salzburg on my own before going to my conference. I went to Mirabell Gardens.

My conference was at Schloss Leopoldskron.

It was a great conference and a wonderful place to spend the week. I was ready get home, back to Vienna, by Sunday.  I got to the train station nice and early so that I could be home before noon.

Unfortunately, rather than taking the train to Vienna, I got on the train to Innsbruck. This was a mistake. Here's why:

It was a two-hour train ride from Salzburg to Innsbruck. Halfway through it, the conductor came around collecting tickets. This is when I learned, from his scolding and tsk-tsk-ing, that I was on the wrong train. It was an express train, so there were no stops in between.  It was a two-hour return to Salzburg, THEN the three-hour ride to Vienna. I was not home before noon, but I was terribly glad to see M at the train station!