Day 4 - Mozart was nuts!

We arrived in Salzburg around noon and immediately fell in love with this historic and cultured town. Last year, we visited Vienna and it was hands down my favorite stop on our entire trek through Europe, but Salzburg is a completely different kind of Austria.

Granted, it's a tourist trap with the Sound of Music mishugas, Mozart souvenirs, etc., but we didn't mind getting trapped one little bit.

First thing we noticed from our hotel room was the view of the old town, the impressive Hohensalzburg Fortress overlooking the town and the mountains in the background. Yes, some of them still have snow. We saw some of the smaller mountains of the Alps on our trip to Fussen, but these rocks are significantly bigger. (The REAL big ones are coming next week in Innsbruck and Switzerland, and I'm sure Genevieve will want to climb all of them!)

Actually that was the second thing we noticed. Our hotel, Hotel Europa, is a 4-star floppenhaus (air conditioned) that's part of the Austria Trend chain, a reputable group across Central and Eastern Europe. They pride themselves in their connection with the more exotic locations in the world and sport photos of outworldly locations on walls throughout the place. Outside of our door hung one such photo of an exotic location -- FORT WORTH, TEXAS!

But I digress...

We couldn't wait to get onto the street and into old Salzburg and dropped our bags and almost sprinted to the bridge over the Salzach River. This town was founded sometime in the 7th century. They said it was mostly Baroque, but from the looks of things they'd had plenty of money through the ages. Incredible palaces, narrow well-kept streets full of shops, restaurants, BAKERIES and coffee shops and a boatload of churches built seemingly on top of each other.

The main platz, Mozartplatz, is one of a series of plazas which lead from the Salzach River through the old town. Of course, the centerpiece is a statue of Wolfie himself. He lived in Salzburg until he was 24 and left for Vienna because the archbishop-prince didn't dig his sound!

Mozart was nuts. This place is super!

Those Salzburger archbishop-princes (odd mix of clergy and royalty) erected magnificent cathedrals and palaces and monuments to themselves, carving into the heart of the mountain itself.

We wandered the streets all day, culminating with a visit to the Hohensalzburg Fortress where we enjoyed some positively knockout views of the old city and the entire area. You can view some of that in the slide show below.

SALZBURG IS AWESOME. Tomorrow, we head out to the Lake District and the Sound of Music Tour. (No, I'm not gay, but sometimes I wonder!)

Stay tuned!