St Wolfgang - Salzburg - St Wolgang

Salzburg - Castle beyond

An hour drive East today to Salzburg.  Home of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and the movie the Sound of Music.  I knew this anyway but in case you'd lived under a rock for the last 40 years the souvenirs, tours and posters plastered everywhere pretty much gave it away. 

First things first though we ran out of megabytes on the internet last night in St Wolfgang so first port of call was a visit to a shop to get some more data on our host's dongle.  As we haven't had a set plan as we have travelled through Europe on our trip the internet is absolutely essential.  We are using it constantly to research what to do in each place but more importantly to find accommodation in the next place we think we might go.

I'm not sure what we'd do without it.  (Probably need to be far more organised and have a dozen guide books packed.)

Part of the castle from the roof.
Note cracking view behind.

It was absolutely freezing the day we were in Salzburg and I'm not sure if the temperature topped 3 or 4 degrees all day.  To make the experience more worthwhile the town was inundated by fog which allowed us to see, at various times during the day, up to a massive 100m away.

Besides Mozart and the Sound of Music Salzburg is known for its famous castle on the hill (where else) so we went on a tour of that.  

More castle

A lot of places here have an audio guided tour which is good as you just wander from room to room, press the button and listen to what they have to say at your own pace.  On this tour there was a kids version of the audio tour  which they loved.  What a great idea and the first place we have been that we have seen this option.

The Hohensalzburg Castle is one of the largest in Europe and one that was never taken by force.  (Though it was surrendered to the French at one stage.)

Old Mo's place of birth.

There were torture rooms, dungeons, an armour display and also weapons from the past.  All the things the kids seem fascinated by so they had a good time.

On the tour we ended up on the roof and had to laugh as the audio guide was giving a description of all the buildings and highlights you could "see" from the roof and the history behind them.  Given that visibility was reduced to about 30m at that stage one of the castle staff said dry as you like "you'll have to use your imagination".

Came down the castle hill on the funicular and walked around the old down and bought a couple of souvenirs, grabbed a happy snap of Wolf's birthplace & scooted back to the car for the drive home.  

(With the air-con pumping at 27 degrees.  The bloody thing won't go any higher.)