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So day two of Salzburg started early with a yummy breakfast of hams and cheeses. It was the first time since I've been here that I actually ate a traditional Austrian breakfast (other than croissants). We walked back downtown and took an incline to the top of the hill to the fortress that dominates pretty much every picture of Salzburg. The best part of the fortress was the view!! from there we could see the Alps all around us and it was a clear, beautiful day, so our view was even better than the one we had yesterday.
The fortress itself was neat to tour. The tourguide was obnoxious, though. He yelled at us for not knowing how to use the handheld audio guides, and I asked him if one of the buildings down below was from the sound of music (and in fact, it was!! The back side of the Von Trapp's home on the river in the movie) and he told me that some pathetic people come to Salzburg just to see the sound of music tour, and he told us that he hadnt actually seen the movie but given the tour like 450 times or something. Then he quit because he realized that people weren't actually interested in the city...just the movie. Haha it was actually pretty funny...he was so bitter!! I got some pretty cool postcards that I'm going to frame..they are artwork by a local artist who does cartoons of Mozart.
After we finished at the fortress we grabbed a quick lunch at Hellbrun, our final stop of the trip. While there, we visited the Trick fountains. They were hilarious. The first stop was at the table where the prince hosted dinner parties. The rule for dinner parties is that you may not stand unless the host stands...so the prince put fountains in the seat of each chair and around the table so that he wouldn't get wet, but his guests would get soaked, and couldn't do anything about it! Not to mention, he only did this when they were wasted...which only adds to the fun. Fortunately, on our tour there was a group of about 10 younger kids who wanted to get wet on the tour (they came prepared--we had no idea until they told us to keep our cameras dry) and so they took one for the team and sat on the chairs while the fountains went off..they screamed and i recorded it on my camera :) So while we were leaving the dry zone, the tourguide turned the fountains back on and we got our first taste of how the tour would be. For the entire time, we would be avoiding any part of the ground that looked like it had been touched by water--not to mention ..it was only in the 70's and we didnt want to get cold/wet! The next stop was at another fountain room that looked safe until the hidden jets got us wet again! It was actually pretty funny, although many of the girls on the tour didn't appreciate it very much. We saw a really neat room that had bird sounds that were actually due to the sound of water moving through a pipe system...at first we were confused, but when we figured it out, i thought it was pretty cool. This prince must have had quite a sense of humor between the birds and tricks and everything being so well hidden but also really beautiful! There were deer outside that had trick fountains coming out of them, and as we walked down the path to our next stop a few people who were behind got wet when they went off. Another spot was the mechanical theater. It had a crazy amount of moving figures...something like 100 and then there was a water organ to go with it (of course!). They depicted a scene from Austrian life 400 years ago (when the castle and water works were built...pretty sophisticated for the water technology they used!) full with all classes and occupations! Of course, the water sprang at the guests who stopped to watch the show...Our final stop was a hut with a golden hat inside of it. This hat sat on top of a stream of water and when the guide moved a lever, the hat would rise up and down based on the water pressure. It was fun to watch, and I wasn't afraid of getting wet. When we walked back down the path to get back to the main route of the tour, however, water sprang up on either side of the pretty narrow way and We walked under it, but didnt get wet...it was like walking between two sprinklers that went over your head. Some kids really enjoyed it and kept running back and forth, so the tourguide decreased the water pressure and made the fountains completely soak them. They loved it. Better them than us!!!
After we left the most entertaining tour I'd ever been on, the girls made a beeline for the Pavillion from the Sound of Music where Liesl and Rolf have their famous scene. It was so much bigger than you think of it being in the movie! What girl didn't want to be Liesl when she saw the movie? This was so fun to see...we had all been craving sound of music sights. We saw the mirabell gardens where they sing Do-Re-Mi, but not much else :( Unfortunately, we were locked out of the pavillion, but took plenty of time getting our pictures with it. While we were taking pictures, our attention shifted to some people walking their pet rabbits on leashes (???) so of course, the whole group of about 15 of us approached these poor people because i guess everyone was really interested to know why the rabbits were on leashes...whatever. ha we went to the playground after that, and got really really dizzy on the little merry go round things and seesaws and ziplines and all that kind of stuff... It was good to get our ya ya's out before we got back on the bus for our 3 hour ride home.
On our way home, we drove through Mondsee, the place where Mozarts mother was born (do we really care about that?) and drove through some of the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen. I know i keep saying it, but this really was i think the pinnacle for beauty I'll see in Europe on this trip. The lakes were blue...real blue and not green or brown or dark...they were deep and if they weren't you could have seen clear to the bottom. Out of the lakes rose the alps. Gorgeous...it wasnt a busy area, more like a retreat with little lake houses here and there. Just stunning. We stopped at Gustav Mahler's composition hut ...he had it built so he could concentrate and look out over the water to the mountains while he worked on his second and third symphonies ...it was a pretty small space...maybe 10 feet by 10 feet, only enough room for a small grand piano and a desk. We walked around down by the lake for a little and made our way home to Vienna!
As if that wasn't enough for one day, we got back, changed and we went out to a bar on the Gurtel (the second, farther out ring). It was fun, but crowded so we had a few drinks and left. Fun times and now I'm exhausted!!! Happy Father's day!
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