salzburg, austria

When we arrived in Salzburg it was late and we just caught the bus to our hostel right away. It was massive and was almost like a hotel. It was probably one of my most favorite so far - we had proper blankets that were like duvets, nice pillows, and a realllly awesome buffet breakfast. It was very cozy and comfortable. Salzburg is where parts of The Sound of Music was filmed, and that's one of the city's main claims to fame (along with being Mozart's birthplace). Every night at 8 o'clock our hostel would have screenings of the movie, lol.

When we got up in the morning we walked all around the Old Town. In terms of sightseeing, there isn't a whole lot to see in Salzburg, it's just a nice place to stroll around and kind of relax. I guess that's why they cling so hard to The Sound of Music and Mozart! There were even stores full of these Mozart chocolates in all sorts of different packaging, along with all sorts of varieties of Mozart Cafes and the like. We walked up the Castle hill for the view, but didn't tour the inside. There was also a really beautiful church there, and when we entered there was a mass in progress. I wish I had known what time it started at, because I would've liked to have attended the whole thing. We just stayed and listened to the choir for a little while before heading back to the hostel.

In the morning we made a day trip to the ice caves in the nearby town of Werfen. We left our packs at the train station in a locker and just picked them up later when we returned to catch our train to Vienna. Werfen was only about 40 minutes away by train, and it was really easy to get there. I love how convenient and easy it is to get around here. Even though we had to catch an afternoon train from Salzburg to Vienna, it was no problem to make a side trip to Werfen first. From the train station in Werfen we caught shuttle bus part way up the mountain, had to hike for 20 minutes, caught the cable car higher up the mountain, then had to hike another 20 minutes further up. There were no English tours, but our guide put us up at the front, and would give us our own private explanations in English in between the German ones. He also let us take pictures even though we weren't supposed to! The ice caves were really awesome, and freeeeezing cold! There's not much more I can say about them to describe them other than that they were massive caves made of ice, so I'll let the pictures below do the talking! LoL.. The entrance to the cave was first discovered in the late 1800's, and I can't imagine how difficult that must have been in terms of how shoddy the mountaineering equipment must have been back then. The caves themselves are estimated to be between 40 and 60 million years old, and in some parts you can actually see how the ice is layered, in the same way that a tree has age rings. There were also parts where there were narrow tunnels with wind rushing through against us because of the different elevations and slight temperature variations. It was really neat. We were lucky we got there early because the lines for the cable car up were a lot longer as we were leaving and we might have ended up missing our train. After the hike down on the way to the parking lot there was this family heading up, and the daughter who must have been around 5 or 6 was just SCREAMING and whining for her mom to pick her up and carry her (the trail was quite steep). We thought it was funny because that was only the beginning! There was still another hike and then the actual hike through the caves.. I felt sorry for whoever was on her tour!, hahaha.. We caught the shuttle back to the train station and made our way to Salzburg where we caught the train to Vienna.