Salzburg

 Cycling into the city of Salzburg yesterday was really easy. The path from Oberndorf took us through shady woodland along the Salzaach River right into the heart of the city. You immediately notice the commanding 900 year-old castle (Festung Hohensalzburg) on the top of the cliff overlooking the very Baroque old town below.

Last night we attended an evening of Chamber music in Schloss Mirabelle in a most ornate room called the Marmorsaal (Marble Hall). Near the end of the performance, the lights went out - the whole of Salzburg experienced a power outage for about an hour. It didn't affect the concert but it was an odd experience. Restaurants had to close and we returned to the sanctuary of our guest-house with our solar camping lights!

Prior to the concert we admired the beautiful gardens around the palace, and we didn't realize till after that the garden was where the young Von Trapps practiced Do-Re-Me in The Sound of Music.

Today we attended a short organ recital in the Cathedral. Amazing sound from five different organs - two organists "duetting" and rotating to different organs.

The Pegasus fountain in the Mirabell gardens was one of the settings  for The Sound of Music

Mirabell Gardens

The Marble Hall where we attended a concert - piano/flute

Inside Salzburg Dom (Cathedral) and one of the five organs

View of the Dom (centre background) and other churches from part-way up the path to the cliff-top fortress

Just so we could be in the heart of the city, rather than camping, we are in a lovely little guesthouse in the middle of the action. And because it was supposed rain all day today, we opted to stay two nights rather than cycling. Turns out it didn't rain all day until tonight, but we thoroughly enjoyed strolling  around and taking in a bit of culture. 

Hanging out this evening in our Moroccan-themed guesthouse

Tomorrow begins the part of the trip that we've been most excited about. We've known about the Alps to Adriatic cycle route for a number of years now, and finally we are starting it. I've watched numerous YouTube videos about it and it looks lovely. For anyone wanting to read more about it, you can check out this very good website here. We should be able to camp for the Austrian section, but there are very few campgrounds once we cross into Italy, so we'll see how that works out. We do still have some logistics to work out for once we get to Grado, but we'll deal with that once we get a better idea of our arrival date. What we do know is we fly home from Venice (Marco Polo) on July 8th.

The blue line is our intended route from Salzburg to the Adriatic Sea at a place called Grado, following "The Ciclovia Alpe-Adria Radweg"

Comments

  1. So if you had Mozart's famous balls in Salzburg. Delicious round chocolate candies wrapped in gold red tinfoil. They are not cheap at all, but good.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, Frank knew about those so so did try them. Pretty good

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