Beautiful Salzburg

The drive from Venice to our home is 8 hours.  Salzburg is conveniently located at the 4 hour mark.  We drove up from Venice on Thursday, April 21st, and arrived at our little guest house right at bedtime.  The next day we woke up, enjoyed a fantastic breakfast at our hotel, and drove into Salzburg to see the sights.

Our first stop was to ride the funicular up to the Hohensalzburg Fortress.  You can see the massive Fortress situated on top of the hill in this photo.  

Townsend and Emerson listening to the audio guide of the Fortress.  They were interested for about 5 minutes, unfortunately the tour lasts 45 minutes!

The tour takes you to the top of one of the guard towers.  Julian was a real trooper being stuck in the backpack the whole time.  From the top of this tower you can see all of Salzburg plus the surrounding countryside and mountains.

Instead of riding the funicular back down the mountain we decided to take the Mönchsberg Walk from the Fortress back into the city.  It was a beautiful sunny day and perfect for a hike down the mountain.

We enjoyed some time in the Mirabell Gardens.  They have fountains and paths through trees to explore but best of all they have a great playground!

Julian throwing rocks into the Salzach River that runs through Salzburg.  Say "cheeeeese" Julian.

Family photo with Salzburg in the background.

Saturday, April 23rd.  We knew we had to head home but we just didn't want to give up our vacation quite yet.  Just outside of Salzburg is an "open air" museum with old houses that have been brought from different parts of Austria and reconstructed on site.  It was another sunny day so we figured we had one more stop to make before we headed home.

A small train takes you around to the different "villages" within the museum.  Julian loves trains and was so excited to watch the world go by from the train window.

You can explore inside all the old homes.  The boys loved just running all around the house, up the stairs, down into the cellars, around the gardens.  It was a great opportunity to get some energy out before the long car ride home.

Julian loved all the water troughs.

There was a pond with millions of tadpoles swimming around.  They must have all hatched about the same time, there were so many.  The boys just had to dip their hands in the water and they could catch a tadpole.

Mountains, old farmhouse, green meadow with flowers...what more do you want in a photo?

We ate some yummy Austrian food and then it was time to officially call our vacation "finished" and hit the road for home.  What a fantastic trip!