(November 7th)
Good morning from Salzburg! How is everybody? It's 10:30am and we've already been up for three hours, hiking around and then showering and getting checked out. We've eaten too much breakfast and packed stolen sandwiches for lunch. We've explored every inch of the city we could get to with our wandering feet and curious noses.We've met amazing people and had a ton of laughs. What else is new? Life is goooood.
(continued, November 8th)
Salzburg was my favourite city so far. Pub crawls in Ireland were a blast, Germany was homey and calming, Halloween in Prague was unforgettable. It's all been unreal, we are so lucky to be here. But Salzburg has a certain charm that stole our hearts as soon as we arrived. It's outrageously beautiful. The city itself has a small-town feel, loads of bakeries and little restaurants and people who know every backstreet and shortcut. The souvenir shop people are local and friendly, instead of foreign and sneaky. The Austrians here are so proud to be Austrian, without being mad that we're not Austrian. My experience with the people here was nothing but positive.
The bigger buildings are the visual highlights of the town. Beautiful old churches and cathedrals ring their bells daily, as they have been for centuries. The residence and museum buildings are even majestic; there wasn't one eyesore in the whole city. In one of the main squares horse and carriages are lined up waiting to complete the authentic oldtown experience.
Of course there's a river that runs through the town, complete with quaint foot bridges and speckled with local fisherman to complete Salzburg's aesthetic perfection.
And if this wasn't breathtaking enough already, the city is surrounded by hills and mountains. I'm not sure if I can do it descriptive justice, but I can try: on one side of the city, rolling green grass with little houses nestled into the hills, and trees that are turning for fall making colourful splashes amongst the green. On the other side, tall, rocky mountains that cast a sort of blueish light over the city come dusk. I went running to the top of the fortress on one of our days there and felt like the luckiest person alive looking down over that view. And it stays there of course, day after day, never becoming unnoticed or taken for granted. It was just beautiful.
(Continued, yet again, November 12th)
As you've all probably noticed, I'm having a hard time keeping up with the times...please refer to Ashley's blog at kashleylewis.tumblr.com for a full and different account of our expeditions. She's got much more Prague and Salzburg in there. Since it's November 12th and I'm sitting in our hostel in Nice and we've already done Barcelona, I'll have to just take you through the highlights of Salzburg.
1. It was beautiful. Gorgeous. Stunning. Breathtaking. Did I say we loved it there? We loved it there.
2. Sound of Music tour. For anyone who knows me well enough, who saw the show I did with the SOM medley, who knows that every waking moment that I'm not eating or talking I'm SINGING, I don't have to go into detail. It was unreal. There was singing. And a little dancing. And tons of cheesy photo taking. And all other embarrassing touristy moves you can think of...a dream day overseas you could say. We laughed a lot.
3. Our hostel mates. From Canada, the US, Australia, England, we loved them all. We went out for dinner to a local Austrian bar with Elizabeth from Pittsburgh and ate the most delicious schnitzel, sauerkraut, sausage and strudel ever. EVER. It was sooo soo good. One of the nights we just sat around drinking beer and playing cards with everybody and laughing until our sides hurt. Always a good way to end the day.
4. The self tour of the fortress. Quite a climb, quite a view, ancient and historically alluring and altogether wonderful.
5. The panorama museum featuring the true story of the Von Trapp family and a massive panoramic painting of the city of Salzburg as seen from the top of the fortress.
Salzburg was easy living. We finally took some time to breathe and really take in the city and its sights. Ashley went hiking and I went for jogs. It was wonderful on many levels.
The day that we left Salzburg we knew we had a long day of travel ahead of us. We had, however, booked a sleeper car on a train from Bern to Barcelona so the long rides through Austria and Switzerland weren't so bad, with the sweet thought in mind of our cozy little beds on the overnight train.
We get to Bern and eat dinner and laze around the train station, waiting for our beauuutiful sleeper car. Excited to stretch out, have a little room all to ourselves, be rocked to sleep by the gentle chug of the train. Looking forward to waking up fresh and bright-eyed, fully prepared for a cheerful day in Barcelona. ... HA.
A strike in France + AUSFAIL + a swiss translator = no sleeper car for Ashley and Sam.
No need to go into details here. I was grumpy. That is all.
Barcelona awaited us though, and it was hard to be grumpy in the hot, bright sunshine on the coast of Spain, or as we later learned to call it, Catalonia. We spent the whole day lazing about the pier, soaking up the sun and laughing unbelievably at the previous night.
A good sense of humour for the win. More to come!
xsk.
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Vienna.
Ok, I lied about Vienna.
The day after Halloween ending up being a public holiday...everything was closed. No groceries, no Naschmarkt, no perfectly organized day. We ended up subwaying around for groceries and having a much later start than planned. The touristy stuff a few stations from our hostel was open though. We saw Schonnbrunn Palace and took goofy photos on the stairs. We walked the palace grounds and gardens and discovered at the back of the grounds-- Vienna Zoo, the oldest zoo in the world. ...
Forget the castle tours, Ash and I went to the zoo.
It was huge. And freezing. And all in German. We had fun anyways.
We saw sealions that were so playful when we visited, they were swimming and splashing and attracting a huge crowd of people. We saw penguins that made us laugh out loud, hopping and waddling around...I have a video that explains this better...so cute! We saw a massive giraffe that stood four feet from us and chewed enthusiastically at his grass. AND, we saw a red lemur that curiously and fearlessly played with us through his little window. Red pandas, regular pandas, otters, koalas, rhinos, flamingos, pelicans, bears, fish, bugs, tigers, cheetahs and deer of all sorts...we saw it all. Except elephants! The zoo closed before we could make it all the way around its huge grounds.
At night we visted the Haus der Musik which was not what we expected and actually just hilariously weird. It was all about how sound is created and travels through our bodies, and they had exhibits dedicated to the great composers of Austria, Beethoven and Mozart (and others that I can't remember off the top of my head). But you had to stick your head in these set-ups in the walls, and make recordings of noises in the "sound trees", and there was one wonky room that was supposed to represent what it sounded like to be a baby in a womb. The whole place was like something Hunter S. Thompson would create. ...Take that for judgement as you will.
The next day in Vienna we did the things closer to our hostel. The Naschmarkt was really cool, everyone selling homemade goodies from stuffed peppers and olives to candied dried fruit to teas and hats and gloves...loads of stuff worth looking at. Didn't buy anything...should've bought a really warm hat though, because we froze in Vienna. We visited the shopstreet and ate Happy Noodles (for you Mireille!) a warm and welcome saucy stirfry to fight the cold.
In the afternoon we visited MuseumsQuartier which is literally a block of museums. Everything was pretty to look at, but we didn't throw ourselves into life in Vienna the way we did in Prague. Exhausted from our weekend in Prague, we slept early most nights in Vienna. At the end of our experience, I can't say that this city stole our hearts like some of the others (sorry Mireille). Maybe we just need to spend more time there and really immerse ourselves. ...Then again, maybe not.
The day after Halloween ending up being a public holiday...everything was closed. No groceries, no Naschmarkt, no perfectly organized day. We ended up subwaying around for groceries and having a much later start than planned. The touristy stuff a few stations from our hostel was open though. We saw Schonnbrunn Palace and took goofy photos on the stairs. We walked the palace grounds and gardens and discovered at the back of the grounds-- Vienna Zoo, the oldest zoo in the world. ...
Forget the castle tours, Ash and I went to the zoo.
It was huge. And freezing. And all in German. We had fun anyways.
We saw sealions that were so playful when we visited, they were swimming and splashing and attracting a huge crowd of people. We saw penguins that made us laugh out loud, hopping and waddling around...I have a video that explains this better...so cute! We saw a massive giraffe that stood four feet from us and chewed enthusiastically at his grass. AND, we saw a red lemur that curiously and fearlessly played with us through his little window. Red pandas, regular pandas, otters, koalas, rhinos, flamingos, pelicans, bears, fish, bugs, tigers, cheetahs and deer of all sorts...we saw it all. Except elephants! The zoo closed before we could make it all the way around its huge grounds.
At night we visted the Haus der Musik which was not what we expected and actually just hilariously weird. It was all about how sound is created and travels through our bodies, and they had exhibits dedicated to the great composers of Austria, Beethoven and Mozart (and others that I can't remember off the top of my head). But you had to stick your head in these set-ups in the walls, and make recordings of noises in the "sound trees", and there was one wonky room that was supposed to represent what it sounded like to be a baby in a womb. The whole place was like something Hunter S. Thompson would create. ...Take that for judgement as you will.
The next day in Vienna we did the things closer to our hostel. The Naschmarkt was really cool, everyone selling homemade goodies from stuffed peppers and olives to candied dried fruit to teas and hats and gloves...loads of stuff worth looking at. Didn't buy anything...should've bought a really warm hat though, because we froze in Vienna. We visited the shopstreet and ate Happy Noodles (for you Mireille!) a warm and welcome saucy stirfry to fight the cold.
In the afternoon we visited MuseumsQuartier which is literally a block of museums. Everything was pretty to look at, but we didn't throw ourselves into life in Vienna the way we did in Prague. Exhausted from our weekend in Prague, we slept early most nights in Vienna. At the end of our experience, I can't say that this city stole our hearts like some of the others (sorry Mireille). Maybe we just need to spend more time there and really immerse ourselves. ...Then again, maybe not.
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