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Now I know why we try to avoid motorways. As we had a fair distance to travel today we agreed to use the motorway up through Austria to Salzburg. It would seem, however, the more you pay to use the road the more they have to spend on road works. The trip to Salzburg was about 50% motorway and 50% road works - what a con! We even had to pay £6 to use one of the tunnels and then had to wait 30 minutes to drive through it because of - you've guessed it - road works. Anyway we finally made it to Salzburg albeit 1 hour later than we should.
Now, many things are all about your expectations. For example, we had no expectations for Ljubljana and therefore it came as a wonderful surprise. Salzburg, on the other hand, held high expectations for us and, whilst the centre was really nice, and there were lots of lovely buildings, it never really matched the magic we thought it would have. Yes, it was the birthplace of Mozart, but even he only spent 7 years here before moving to Vienna.
Nevertheless we had a long walk around the centre, Jacqui eating at every opportunity! From spicy sausage to apple strudel - with cream! Some of the shop windows were interesting, including the window full of plastic ducks dressed in traditional Austrian clothes.
Of course, Salzburg is also famous for the film "The Sound of Music". We didn't take the tour but we did walk up to the abbey which was used in the film where 'Maria' was a nun.
Another interesting thing was the placing of padlocks on one of the bridges. This was similar to Ljubljana but we don't know whether there is a connection.
Tomorrow we are off to the salt mines.
Woke up to steady rain. This was forecast and expected to clear up in the afternoon. Didn't matter anyway because today we were going underground down the Salt Mines at Bad Durrnberg. The salt excavated here was very important to the region. Mining first started 300BC by the Celts. In the Middle Ages the salt brought great wealth to the region and paid for most of Salzburg's architecture we see today. The mines were right on the Austrian/German border and when we were underground we actually crossed the border. We have crossed borders on trains, in a plane, by car, and on a boat; over bridges, through tunnels, over mountains and now UNDERGROUND!
Actually the salt mine trip was pretty interesting and good value. Afterwards we visited the nearby town of Hallein before returning to our campsite in the afternoon to give Guzzler a once over now the rain had gone (as forecast).
Another early start tomorrow as we are off to Dachau, just outside Munich.
Nick & Jax xx
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