Salzburg was enlightening. The tourist books warned of more tourists than Venice which sent shudders up and down my spine. After a somewhat fraught arrival and a 4 hour traffic jam we eventually arrive at Weisse Taube, a lovely little hotel just off Mozart Sq. It was brisk when we set off out to eat and after a walk around the old town we settled on a restaurant called K+K where out restaurant of the evening had only 6 tables in it. The waiter was lovely, very very attentive, funny, croatian and knowledgable. We asked him to choose a wine to go with out meal. The Bald man ordered potato soup while I had the very traditional garlic cream soup. Both were equally delicious. The garlic soup, I thought would become over powering but it was like meeting an old friend, someone you know intimately and yet until you have that first hug, you can’t remember what they smell like. The lovely waiter produced a local Riesling which was full of flavour, yet light enough to compliment the soups and cut the cream a little. I went straight for the Salzburg schnitzel which was full of ham and mushrooms and cooked perfectly. It was accompanied by plain old boiled tatties, which some may consider dull, but in fact it was nice to be able to taste the spud without it being flavoured with other ingredients. The Bald man’s steak was up to standard apparently and again disappeared rapidly.
Our decision had been to have an early night and not drink too much so we could have a full day the next. So when we rolled into our hotel room at 3am the following morning, having been discovered by an Irish bar and danced around the fountain in the rain with my phone stuck down my front to give us musical accompaniment, the only thing we could think about was bed.
Unsurprisingly, the following day was a lazy one. We rose late and tottered off downstairs for our first Austrian breakfast. A lovely lady in traditional dress sat us a table and began to roll off a list of potential breakfast options after delivering fresh bread and a plate of jams and triangles of cheese. “would we like ham and cheese?” “ Yes please” “would you like yoghurt and muesli” “yes please” “would we like soft boiled eggs?” “ Yes please” Would we like tea or coffee?” “ yes please” “Which?” “ Oh sorry, both.” As we filled up, I had a feeling I would enjoy Austrian breakfasts.
Part of our accommodation deal was a Salzburg card which gave us either free entry or very reduced entry to a number of different attractions. There is so much to utilize on it, I don’t think we scraped the surface. We did, go on a horse and carriage trip, take the river boat up and down the river and sat in it while it “danced” for us - that is spun in a circle to a Mozart Waltz, cliche but quite lovely. We went up to the top of the castle and looked down on the rest of the city - quite spectacular. Our lunch on the saturday was quite simply hotdogs. We wondered around the market which is glorious and shared various different hotdogs from 3 or 4 stands. In any other country I would despise hotdogs but these were glorious, meaty with the perfect combination of mustard and ketchup to enhance the flavours not over power them. The Salzburg market is on most days and had a great Foodie mix of treats. The butchers stall were amazing, full of delicacies I spent the rest of the afternoon reading up on. Giant meatballs and meatloaves took prize place in the middle of the display and the different cured meats, schpek and bacon were deep red and so appealing. The cheese counters had tasters of masses of different cheese on offer, lots of goudas and goats cheese, just yummy. Towards the back was a stall with herbs and spices in test tubes. One of the them has some gold nuggets in which when I enquired the stall proprietor asked me to hold my hand out as she shook some into my palm. “Taste them” she said, so I did. And there it was in front of me, George Clooney in a test tube!
Chocolate covered popping candy decorated with edible gold leaf! GEORGE CLOONEY IN A TEST TUBE! The chocolate melts away and the popping candy starts going wild in your mouth, making your tongue tingle and a very silly grin appear on your face. The stall proprietor smiled as I burst out laughing “ Good Yah?” “Bloody Good Yah” So I bought 3 George’s in the aid of research, and popped my way around Salzburg for the afternoon.
Our dinner that evening was somewhere recommended by the barmaid from the Irish bar and right next door to the hotel, so not far to crawl home. Barry had my garlic soup to start which was slightly more pungent than across the square the night before, but still delicious. I had a beef consume with a large cheese dumpling in the middle - simple but yummy. More dumplings turned up with my goulash following the soup and by the end of it I certainly looked more like a dumpling than when we walked in.
Sunday was Barry’s birthday and after a slap up breakfast and lazy morning in a horse drawn carriage we headed out to the Salt mine to be thrown down a wooden slide 300m underground in the name of Salt. Arriving a bit early we headed in to the closest town to kill some time and both wished it was the depths of winter so the coffee and hot chocolate we were drinking would be more appreciated. The mountain was so beautiful, bright blue cloudless sky, rich green trees and fields. Again I could have stayed for ever, it was somewhere I was very at peace with. But instead of spending the rest of my life in an Alpine paradise, we went back to the salt mine, donned some overalls and headed on a little train into the depths of an Austrian mountainside. The little train takes you in, in, in and down the mountain until you get to a big cavern with a very long wooden slide taking deeper down into the mountain. We sat on the slide, felt like we were dropping off the edge of a precipice and I screamed like a right Nancy until we got to the end of it!
The Salt mines are pretty special, the lake cavern in the middle is magical. To show it off they light it up and play Mozart very loudly, just perfect.
Our mission for the afternoon was to get to the beer halls of Salzburg. The Augustiner Monastery has a fabulous story behind it of the monks making beer that they then on sold. The beer hall is massive with a food court in the rooms around it. Outside the garden can take over 2000 and as we took our litres of beer and sat in the sun, I beelined towards some delicious looking ribs that were just the yummiest things. The shack selling them had two options, neither of which were very vegetarian friendly - rack of ribs or 1/4 chicken.... OH YEAH! Why oh why can we not have something similar in NZ? What was impressive was no one was plastered or racous drunk, it was great. We bar crawled our way back to the hotel stopping in various different bars along the way. A fabulous evening.
Monday was a boat cruise up the river and a trip up the hill to the castle. It is another world up there, isolated, quite and rather special. We came back down via the cemetery where the Sound of Music was filmed. By chance at the end of the cemetery was a restaurant I had read a lot about, St Peter Stiftskeller. We decided to have lunch after falling in love with surroundings. Our lunch was in an open air courtyard though our seats were covered. It is delicately decorated with perfect flowers and amazing crockery and glass wear. We were adventurous in our meals The Bald Man having a dish of Lung which I was amazed he picked, but when I tasted it it was beautiful. The restaurant is very definitely worth a visit, I would go back in an instant. We finished off our last day in Salzburg with a recital of Mozart at the town hall, just lovely.
As we packed our bags and left the next morning for Strasbourg, I was sorry to be leaving Salzburg and the memory of dancing in rain will stick with me forever. On the way out we stopped at the Hellbrunn palace to visit the Trick fountains and the gazebo that was featured in The Sound of Music. Perfect really, just perfect!
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