Munich and Salzburg

We were planning on being all rested and ready to start our day in Munich early, but none of us slept very well, and we were all pretty exhausted the whole day.  So we checked into hostel, looked into some tours, and decided that we wanted to see Neuschwanstein.  We didn’t want to pay a tour guide to take us, so we just counted on finding it by ourselves.  I looked up the train and bus stop names, and we left with just those names.

It turns out we didn’t even need to look those up.  If you’re in Munich, you can just follow a large group of Asians with cameras, and you’ll end up at the castle.

So, we made it to the castle, waited in a huge line for tickets, and finally got to go in.  I was a little disappointed with the tour, mostly because of how many of us they crammed in there.  It was hard to see some of the things the guide was pointing out. It was still really pretty, but I think the inside of Schloss Brühl was more impressive.The outside of this one was much prettier though.

To take that first picture, we walked out onto a bridge across a canyon.  Here it is from inside the castle:

Hohenschwangau was nearby too, but we didn't take a tour of it.

The trip to the castle took all day, so we didn’t do much after. 

On Saturday, we went on a free tour of Munich.  The guide walked us around for 4 hours, and had some pretty interesting stories about events involving Nazis around the city, along with general history back to medieval times. 

This bronze strip shows where people would have walked to avoid walking past a plaque that was put up as a memorial for Nazis who died in the Beer Hall Putsch.  They were required to salute the plaque as they walked by, and there were Nazi guards making sure you did so.  Those who didn't were shipped off to a concentration camp, so people began taking a side street to avoid it.  Guards figured this out, and made another post around the corner to catch people trying to get around it.  These people were sent to camps as well.  This strip is a memorial to them.

After the tour, we went souvenir shopping, and climbed up St. Peter’s Church tower.  The tower had over 300 steps to the top, and no elevator, so the girls weren’t too happy with me for making them climb it.  But they survived, and we had a great view of the city.

We caught a 6 o’clock train to Salzburg that evening.  We were the only group to go to another city that weekend; everyone else stayed in Munich. It was nice splitting off into smaller groups on weekends. It made planning much easier.

For dinner, we found a sushi restaurant near the hostel, and I tried octopus there! 

For the rest of the night, we just hung out in the hostel and planned for the rest of our time there.

On Sunday morning, we slept in for the first time in forever.  Then we visited Mozart’s house, which ended up only being about a ten minute walk from our hostel.

Here’s one of his harpsichords:

And his entire printed works:

Mozart was a busy man.

The Sound of Music tour was next, so we watched the movie during lunch, so it would be fresh in our minds.

It was pretty cool recognizing the scenery from the movie.

Here's what we rode around the city in:

and the lake where the kid's boat sank, along with the patio where Uncle Max sat:

The trees that the children were climbing in:

and the gazebo:

We also went to the church that Maria was married in.

After the tour, our guide pointed us towards Mirabell gardens, where more of the movie was shot.  We walked around there for a while and took lots of pictures.

They ran around this fountain during Do-Re-Mi:

and also ran through this tunnel:

After the Sound of Music sights, we spent a little more time walking around the garden before heading back to the hostel.  There were lots of pretty flowers:

We went to Cafe Tomaselli for dinner, which is the oldest coffee shop in Austria.  It was started around 1700, and is still operated by the Tomaselli family.  We ate there because of that, and the fact that Mozart was a frequent customer there.  Sooo.... yea, Mozart and I hung out in the same restaurant.

After dinner, we started wandering back towards our hostel.  We thought we knew where we were going, but suddenly, this large rock appeared in our way:

I still have no idea how that mountain ended up between us and the river.

...so that was an adventure navigating around that.

Then we walked along the river, then finally back to the hostel to rest up for the day of travel ahead of us.