Given that Austria was the last week of a five-week trip, it seemed like a bit of an afterthought when we planned it. We decided to focus on Vienna and Salzburg, with most of our time in the latter. Like Germany, the countryside of Austria is just beautiful. It has rolling hills and mountains, lush green valleys, lakes, awesome villages, and wonderful people.
Salzburg
Being the home of “The Sound of Music”, Salzburg has a lot of attractions related to the movie. It’s hard to ignore them as all the tour guides point them out as you tour the city. However, you can’t deny the charm of it as well. We spent a day and half wandering the city, shopping, dining at cool places. We toured the gigantic HohenSalzburg Fortress that towers over the city and caught a string quartet Mozart concert there. The rest of the Salzburg time was spent on day trips, including:
Eagles Nest (Kehlsteinhaus) – Mountain top chalet built for Hitler in the 1930s. It sits atop a high peak in the Berchtesgaden Alps and has incredible views. After the war it was turned into a tourist attraction. The building was burnt down by an arsonist three weeks after we were there.
Dokumentation Obersalzberg Museum and Obersalzburg Bunkers – Detailed explanations, artifacts, and analysis of the lead-up and execution of the WWII. The tour finishes in a walk-through of the enormous underground command center and living quarters built under senior Nazi leaders (including Hitler) vacation houses near the Eagles Nest. It had more than 6 km of tunnels and at least 58 completed rooms.
Eisriesenwelt (world of Ice Giant) Ice Caves – Largest known ice cave in the world. It’s unusual because there are no stalactites or stalagmites – the water enters the middle of the mountain, then freezes on a wall or the floor. The hard part is getting there. You hike up a road and a tunnel, then up another road, take a cable car up, then hike up a terrace to the cave, then climb 700 stairs to see the ice features. But it’s worth it.
Salzkammergut Lake area – exploration of Mondsee, Werfen, St. Gilgen, SchafbergBahn (didn’t go up – no visibility)
Vienna
Our stay in Vienna was quite short and we chose to take a day trip to Melk, Durnstein, and Krems. The original plan was to take a portion of the journey by boat on the Danube, but the river was so low that the boat was cancelled and we ended up bussing it. Our stop in Krems was late and short, but we enjoyed the part that we did see and had a nice dinner. Highlights of the first two stops:
Melk – A pretty little town that hosts the Melk Abby. Monks have been in Melk for more that 900 years and there’s still a few left. The chief attraction today is the current Abby. It was built in the 1700s and is considered a Baroque architectural masterpiece. The Abby and the grounds are just gorgeous.
Dürnstein – For such a small town, it packs a lot of charisma. It’s a well-kept medieval town on the banks of the Danube with nice shops and restaurants. It’s surrounded by Grüner Veltliner vineyards. On the shore of the river stands the renowned church and “Blue Tower” (the Stiftskirche Dürnstein). And, to top it off, above the town towers the ruins of the castle where King Richard I (AKA the “Lionheart”) was imprisoned upon returning from the Crusades.
We spent the last day of our trip dining, visiting the famous Naschmarkt, and getting a jump on some early Christmas shopping. We also had to get ice cream and beaucoup chocolates from the Lindt Schweizer Maître Chocolatier that was all-together-too-conveniently-located on the floor below our Airbnb.
