We left Vienna early in the morning to catch a train to Salzburg. Now considering that we had taken 26 hours worth of trains just a few days before, I was pretty indifferent to the countryside, which meant that instead of looking out the window I decided to finish reading Their Eyes Were Watching God, which I would recommend if you are in need of a good book.
We arrived in Salzburg in the afternoon and after grabbing a small lunch at the hotel headed out into the snow to see what we could before sunset. We passed the Mirabell Gardens, Mozarteum, which is more or less Salzburg’s music university, and the Marionette Theatre (which is paid homage to in The Sound of Music) before crossing a bridge into town.
Overall it didn’t take us too long to walk into Old Salzburg. To be honest, I never thought that there would really be much to do in Salzburg, but Lonely Planet proved me wrong. Unfortunately, due to the way we had arranged our travel plans, we just weren’t going to be able to see much of it. This was really our only shot at seeing anything in town.
Our first stop was to Mozarts Geburtshaus, the house where Mozart was born and raised. While the museum taught me a few things about Mozart, I wouldn’t have said that it was anything very special. One thing that I did find interesting was how Salzburg has really tried to take ownership of Mozart. Mozart is depicted everywhere in the city, which makes it a bit ironic that Mozart himself was not a huge fan of the city and experienced his greatest success when he left.
Once we were through with the museum, we walked through the old town square. I have to hand it to Salzburg, even in the darkness and the snow the city was really quaint and beautiful.
We also stopped by Stiftskirche Sankt Peter, or St. Peter’s Church. We started out by wandering around the cemetery and the catacombs. The catacombs gave us a fairly good view over the church and the city so it’s something that I’d recommend if you don’t have the time to climb one of Salzburg’s mountains.
By the time we climbed down from the catacombs it was more or less dark. This also meant that most things were closed. Because we were pretty limited in what we could do, we stopped by the church (one of the few sights that was still open) before slowly making our way back to our hotel.
Even though we weren’t able to see much, it was nice to get a small sense of the city. I will also say that the day’s biggest success arguably happened over dinner. When my dad and I had eaten lunch at the hotel we spotted a group of four devouring a humongous dessert (it was about three times as large as the amount in the picture). So of course my Dad and I had to ask our waiter what this dessert was and then order it over dinner. It turns out with was salzburger nockerl, a Salzburg specialty, and was quite delicious. So we managed to end the day on both a sweet and high note.
Wayward Travels 