As I've already mentioned in my last post some weeks ago, I visited the city of
Salzburg from August 4th to 7th. I ordered me the 72h-
SalzburgCard so I had a one-time entrance to all the sightseeings for free. I started early in the morning on Sunday, to don't waste any time, my way from Carinthia and first stopped in
Grödig to go up with the
Untersbergbahn to the top at 1.973m. Best to start a trip like this with a great and fascinating view all around the area of Salzburg. You can also find my previous time-table, with all the links to all the sightseeings, by clicking on the following link:
Travel plan Salzburg. My list was quite full, not everything worked as planned, but basically done what was most important to me.
After enjoying the time and view up there, I went back down and drove straight into the city to park my car in the mountain "Kapuzinerberg" parking lot near the AllYouNeed hotel. Next on my plan was to visit the watergames at Castle Hellbrunn and as the bus ticket was also included in my SalzburgCard only thing I had to do was to get on the right bus. In early August temperature here all over Austria were pretty high and best to do was to jump from shadow to shadow, but in Salzburg it was even hotter, so taking a guided tour through the castle and watergames was a pretty good decision. The tour was really interesting and kind of funny presented too. In the photo below you can see the start point. The guides told a bit about the history of the location and then asked some of the group to come down and take a seat at the table in front. What no one knew was, that there were holes in the stone blocks and the table where water splashed out of, after the guide pulled some strings and everyone sitting there, including me, received some cooling splashes of water :) The park around the castle is quite large and there are also many pools and benches to just relax. Spent some time there too after the tour finished and went on to the Salzburg Zoo. It was already a bit late that day and the zoo is really huge. Clouds came up and it was getting darker, a storm hit Salzburg right after I was back at the hotel, so not that good condition for visiting the zoo but anyhow always worth a visit!
Later that night as the storm has passed by, I wanted to get a view from top of the mountain "Kapuzinerberg" onto Salzburg by night, so I went up through the woods with a torch. Always a bit spooky if one's not familiar with the location, but found a nice place up there at the "Bavarian view" looking to the north-west of Salzburg.
The next day, Monday, I started with going south and stopped at the Mirabell Palace and Gardens, which is a simply wonderful but also good visited location with park and fountain. I decided to come back in the evening to take some photos and went on to the
House Of Nature. There you probably could spend a whole day or even more to see everything there. There's a main building and a so-called Science Center which is pretty much interesting. Could write lines but just one thing stunning to mention explicitly. There was an exhibition going on called "Human Footprint" showing high-quality large size satellite images, made by a company called eoVision, which was impressive. Seeing these landscape photographs from high above, really makes you think what humanity is able to do with our planet. In one way the images are fascinating, because of all these geometrical forms, but on the other hand it shows you, what might happen, if we continue doing this for decades.
Tried to see as much as possible in there, I went on in the afternoon to go up the Mönchsberg and got me some delicious dessert and a shandy at the M32. The restaurant is located above the city from where I could take some good photos looking down on the old city of Salzburg and the fortress Hohensalzburg. Up there is also the Museum Of Modern Art, which was worth a visit.
For the rest of ths second day in Salzburg I was just straying through the city, also visited the dome, which was quite impressive. Really like these old buildings from centuries ago and it's achitecture. If you're thinking about the tools they were given, it makes it even more interesting, that they were able to build more beautiful buildings and interior with art masterpieces at no time comparable to ones of our days or what will be build in future times!
In the evening before going back home to the hotel, I took a walk down the river Salzach and again through the gardens of Mirabell palace, wonderful place to end a day, where it started.
On Tuesday, my last full day in Salzburg the plan was to visit the fortress Hohensalzburg in the morning, from where I had a great view again down to the old city of Salzburg and up to the north. Seen a lot in there from the mediaeval times, canons, weapons, instruments of torture, interiors, everything highly interesting. Took a boat tour in the afternoon. Before I went to the Misfits concert at the
Rockhouse in the evening, I went up the Kapuzinerberg again, to check a location, where I wanted to take a photo by night. Just wanted to make sure I also find this spot at darkness, cause it's not easy as everything looks different by night. The concert was cool, met also some people from where I live, location was also nice, but they maybe could blow up the "tunnel" some metres more into the mountain, cause there were quite a lot of people, hardly room to see anything. After the concert I went up to the place I inspected in the afternoon and could get a good final nightshot of Salzburg.
On Wednesday morning I packed all my stuff and on the way back home I made a short excursion to Bavaria and Berchtesgaden, as it is not really that far and my chance to soon get there again is not that high. Pretty much tourism around the King's Lake, but simply beautiful nature. If I find time to get there again, I should probably get up early and spend a whole day, take a boat tour across the lake and hike up to Germany's highest waterfall.
Hope you like my photos and description here, wasn't less work and took longer than I expected. If you like, feel free to share, maybe download my images, available in high-resolution zoom-in-able, or if you'd like to see more visit my portfolios! Any support highly appreciated and maybe one day I can surprise you with another story ;)
