Salzburg - A beautiful little city

Hi Chia!

Your posts!

Two posts! I was treated! HAHA! Yea I have more photos of you and me from ages ago! Perhaps I shall post them later on when I don't have other things to post!

I love your pretty floral things! It really put me in the spring mood, and I wish that summer comes soon! I do like the happy diary idea! I had one last year actually. I found myself needing something to inspire happiness so I bought a journal from Kikki.K and it had 365 pages, one page for every day. So I decided to use this book to write or draw a positive thought, or thing. Even if it was a shitty day, I would find something that would make me happy, such as a picture or drawing on the net, or some lyrics of a song etc. I can't believe what a wonderful journal I ended up having in the end! It is a bit of a challenge to set aside a few minutes to write something down. But it is well worth it!

I called it '365 Days of Happiness' - Guess who featured in there a few times?!

Oh and speaking about spring! Your last post with your cute as a button black dress and the flowers, just made me wish if spring and summer even more! Kev actually started reading your post outloud to me this morning, as I didn't realise that you had made another post! I had to tackle him to stop him from continuing to read more and spoil my read! But ah! That dress just reminds me of Spain. You, and Me and Spain. It was the most romantic time everrrrr! Like the most romantic time that two girls can have in a foreign place! It more so reminded me of Valencia, and our trip to the market! Ahhh.... *sigh*

Salzburg

I had to do another post for Salzburg, because besides mountains and music, there are other wonderful and beautiful things about this city.

The part that Kev and I explored the most was the 'Old Town' which had cobbled stone lanes and is pedestrianised.  I love it how they make attempts to keep the culture and tradition in the Old Town, and soon discovered that even the modern stalls had old school signs which helped people figure out what a shop specialised in:

An umbrella shop

A clothing shop (See the thread and scissors!)

A pharmacy and hat store

Guess!? =P

I really enjoyed the little city of Salzburg as it was so easy to get around, and it was super safe! One of the things about Salzburg is that they had great food from the Michelin Star, to cafe to markets.

Carpe Diem


On our first day in Salzburg, it was raining and we were not prepared for it. So after finding a wonderful umbrella shop, Kev and I walked around Old Town, until we were able to find the restaurant Carpe Diem. Before we had left, I had searched for a Michelin Star restaurant to visit, since we do not have any in little old Perth, the one restaurant that caught our attention was Carpe Diem. When I explained to Kev what food they had and showed him the menu, he asked 'Are you telling me, they serve everything in cones?' When I answered 'Yes' he became super excited. The cone concept was truly unique, and I was curious how they would do it. So, when we found the restaurant, we walked in and enjoyed the yummy cone dishes!

Kev's Red Chicken Wings with baby corn
& spicy dip in a red pepper cone 

My Beef Hamburger with cheddar- cheese
in a rosemary cone, with french fried potatoes
& homemade ketchup

Other food

Kev and his chicken schnitzel burger, both showing off their tongues.

Tasty Pretzel

Cafe Tomaselli

Cafe Tomaselli was recommended to us by our Segway tour guide. She said that it had one of the best apple strudels there and had other wonderful cakes such as cheesecake strudel and the like. Another special thing about this cafe was that Mozart frequently visited this cafe for its coffee and cake too! Kev and I found the cakes were indeed wonderfully light, and the perfect sweetness and taste that one wishes for in a cake, and so we ended up coming here for lunch and 'afternoon tea' two days in row! The cafe also had cake waitresses who walked around with cakes on a platter for you to choose from (just like dim sum) and this was supposed to be how it was back in the day. I was very amused that they had kept this tradition!

Cake waitress!

Strawberry torte of some sort

Ohhh baby... 

Kev and I also made our way to the Monk's Brewery called Augultiner Brau. The monks brought beer to Salzburg and this has been maintained for people to visit and enjoy their beer garden and food. The Brewery itself still looks like a monastery, and so it was a little bit eerie for me. However, it was thriving with life with people in the beer gardens.


Kev and I shared a stein and ate their food. Admittedly, their food was not the best and I could have done with a better dinner, but we had fun and enjoyed the experience. When Kev bought the beer, he had to choose his stone stein from a shelf, and then had to wash it through some water, and then they serve the beer into it! He also said that you could wash the stone stein through hot water in order to warm it up if you were going to drink warm beer. Another tradition that I was pleased that the Austrians had maintained.

Weisswurst from the Markets in the morning. So Yummy!

Chocolate made to look like various vegetables and nuts!

More gardens and trick fountains


While taking photos in Mirabell Gardens, Kev and I stumbled across some mazes which were fun to explore.

Kev in 'zen' mode

Lost

On our last day, I was pooped as. Totally exhausted from no day off from the holiday, however, we had yet to travel outside of the city of Salzburg to see Hellbrunn Palace and the trick fountains. Kev got me up and going though, and when we arrived, I was so happy that he got me up and going! This palace was built by an Archbishop for 'funnsies'. It was a place for him to take his guests to seek relief from the summer heat. No one stayed at the palace over night, it was just for the day, and it contained gardens with grottoes and the trick fountains. The Archbishop had a sense of humour, and throughout the palace gardens, he strategically placed water fountains to wet his guests!

The Archbishop's outdoor dining area.

  

Watch out, for your bum will get wet, unless the Archbishop gives you his seat at the head of the table.

And that's about it for Salzburg! I'll put more photos up on facebook once I get more time to organise through the photos to find the ones worth while posting!

Salzburg, and how it sings to my heart!

Chia! Again, your baking is wonderful! I remember that even in Perth you would always have some goodies for me to try and eat... remember this time:

You and Me in 2008, baking.

My god we look young. AND my pimplesssssss... yuck! Anyways, seeing your muffins reminded me of this day, and it made me miss you in Perth!

Yea the rides looked awesome! Though Kev and I didn't manage to go on any because we always were too full from food or beer, and those rides would have made us yack!

But yes... Salzburg... Ahhhh... it is the city where The Sound of Music was filmed, and also where Mozart was born and raised until he moved to Vienna. Our time here consisted mainly of two things things:

1. Mountains; and
2. Music

Let me go through all those things.

Mountains

As in my previous posts, I do find something special about being high in the mountains, or deep down under the sea. In both places, I feel like I am in a different world, and nothing else matters. Big love for nature. Love love love! When we took the train from Innsbruck to Salzburg... I had to film our ride:

The mountains are so mysterious and I think it is because we are so much higher, that the clouds are closer to us. I also think that seeing clouds touching land, gives an impression that that land is somewhat near to 'heaven' or where the mythical gods live. 

On our first day in Salzburg, Kev and I went on an ice cave tour to the largest ice cave in the world. What I didn't expect was the beautiful hike we would have to take to get up to the ice cave.

Some of the path that we walked

We discovered Mezzo Mix! I mix of coke and fanta!

Kev's Austrian alternative to beer!

The mountain birds standing at attention!

Unfortunately, we were unable to take photos once inside the ice cave, but it was huge! And so very cold despite being summer/autumn!

Mountains were everywhere! Even in the city of Salzburg we could see them. When we went on our Segway tour (organised by Kev), our guide said something really cute: "Sometimes the clouds are too heavy to get over the mountains, so they stay in Salzburg. Once it rains, the clouds get lighter and then they can get over the mountains."

Me on a segway

Music

Sound of Music

In the heart of Old Town, Kev and I ended up going to a 'Sound of Music' dinner performance at Sternbrau (a beer garden and restaurant). It had traditional Austrian pub-like food as well as a live stage performance of songs from the Sound of Music, some traditional Austrian folk music, and Austrian classical pieces including some Mozart. I enjoyed The Sound of Music songs of course, and though Kev and I were the youngest couple there, we were the only ones who were singing along! Anyways, mid way through, they had a traditional folk dance, and Kev was dragged on stage!!! He did really well actually! Later on, when they were singing the last song of the night (so long farewell, tea with jam and bread) I was then dragged on stage to sing along too. AH! We both had our share of the limelight!

Kev and I walked everywhere as Salzburg is quite small. We eventually made it to Mirabell Gardens which was beautiful! It was built by an Archbishop for his 'wife' that he was not supposed to have, but more importantly, it had scenes from 'Do, re, mi' in The Sound of Music. When we first got there, there were SO many people. It got SO annoying.

Augh! Tourists, tourists, and more tourists!

I got so frustrated, and poor Kev had to try and keep me sane. Eventually I just gave up with trying to get photos and said to him "I'm sorry, but we are going to have to get up super early tomorrow morning and come here when everyone is asleep!" 

So the next day, Kev had set our alarm, and we walked to Mirabell Gardens at around 8.30/9/00am and it was quiet. There were still tourists, but a lot less of them, so we had to wait to get certain shots. Eventually we got the photos and footage that I really wanted to take. By way of introduction, and to get you into the right mind set... here's a video from YouTube of the song 'Do, re, mi' from The Sound of Music, and perhaps you can see where my shots are taken from!

Other scenes from the movie include:

'I have confidence in sunshine! I have confidence in rain! 

The cemetery that the movie based the runaway scene from.

I think there is a scene here... I think. But anyways, its the horses bath - for horses (back in the day) to wash after a long journey.

I am 16 going on 17...

Mozart

We also visited Mozart's birth place and place of residence in Salzburg. We were able to go inside and have a look at things like Mozart's piano and original music sheets with his handwriting. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take any photos. But from memory, the thing I really liked was seeing his handwritten notes. There is something about handwriting that is so special. It's so personal, and there is no denying that time was spent by that person, pressing down that sheet of paper, and creating fine strokes and shapes to communicate one thing or another. I just loved it.

Mozart's residence

I just realised that there is so much more to Salzburg, and so, I will have to do another post for the other special things about this beautiful city! Until then, I hope you had a great Monday Chia!