Road Trip to Salzburg

After spending two weeks in Limerick, often referred to as "Stab City" (because they, um, stab people there), it was time for a break. We arrived back in Bratislava on Friday and though we were tired, a road trip to Salzburg seemed like a good idea. We'd been talking about doing it for a while and it seemed as good of a time as any to go. Part of our decision was influenced by David.

David and I work together. A couple of years ago, a colleague put the two of us together because she thought I could offer him some guidance. I'm not so sure about how the giving guidance part went, but we got along pretty well and have had a good relationship ever since. He is also based in Bratislava, but for a shorter term than me. He's leaving soon, so we thought it would be fun to take a trip before he went home. Salzburg is what we came up with. Now, David is young, energetic, and likes to have a good time. This conflicts with about all I stand for: being old, lazy, and having no fun at all. However, these are not insurmountable differences. It helped to have Jenn there, to tip the scales more towards David's favor.

After much debate and in depth analysis, we decided to rent a car rather than take the train. It was a little bit cheaper, would offer more schedule flexibility, and would make for a shorter trip. Fortunately, we were able to rent the only vehicle with automatic transmission the rental company had. Unfortunately, it cost us about twice as much as it would have cost for a standard transmission. I need to learn to drive stick.

It took us quite a bit longer to get out of Bratislava than it should have because the GPS was set to "avoid highways". It took us about 30 minutes or so to figure this out. Once we got it figured it out, stopped to get a quick bite for breakfast and a toll tag once we crossed the Austria border, we were good to go.

Figuring out the GPS

Our Ride

The drive was uneventful, which is a good thing. David made his own mix CD's for us to listen to (5 in all if I remember correctly). We thought it was nice of him to do this until he told us later that he did it so that he would be able to listen to his own music.

We arrived in Salzburg after around 3 hours and 30 minutes. We dropped our stuff off at the Austria Trend Hotel (which should be ashamed of calling itself a 4 star hotel by the way), and walked to the old town. We ate lunch at Carpe Diem Finest Fingerfood, which was a place we had read about and wanted to try. Their gimmick is that they take regular meals, miniaturize them, and put them in cones. Interesting? Sure. Overpriced? Absolutely. Tasty? As far as miniature food goes, I've had worse.

Tuna

Burger Cone

We passed on the funicular and took the steep climb up to the fortress at the top of the city. There were some fantastic views of the city, some old weapons, a ceramic oven, and really creepy puppet room.

After the fortress, we naively set out to visit Leopoldskon, also known as the Von Trapp Mansion from the film, The Sound of Music. We skipped out on the opportunity earlier to take the 4 hour "Original Sound of Music Tour" because 4 hours in a bus looking at things from The Sound of Music isn't something I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy. For a city that does everything it can to remind the visiting tourists that the Sound of Music was filmed in Salzburg, one would think they would make it easier to find. We took a roughly hour and a half walk looking for something that according to the sign below the castle was only 200 meters away. Since none of us really could remember what the house looked like in the movie, we did take pictures of several other houses (including an old age home) that we thought could have been the mansion just to cover our bases. We saw it on a postcard later in the evening and realized we now had multiple pictures of impostor Sound of Music houses.

We had a good dinner of hearty Austrian fare at the casual and comfortable Wilder Mann. The plan was to go out and for Jenn and I to prove to our younger friend, David, how cool we were. I ruined it, as I usually do, and had to go back to the hotel because I had a stomach ache (as I usually do).

It was a long day anyway and we all needed the sleep.

To view the rest of our pictures, click here