Erik's traveller magazine, part 2

Salzburg + Halstatt, Austria
(click on the images to view it in full size)





Salzburg is consider one of the bigger cities in Austria, but it's far smaller when compared to Munich. The city is famous for being the birthplace of Wolfgang Mozart, so you will see many chocolates and souveniers made with his face on it. There is also a castle sitting on top of the mountain that can get a 360 degrees panoramic overview of the city.



We arrived at the trainstation at 7pm so we had just enough time to locate the hotel, check-in, take a breath and go out to find dinner. The city is beautiful at night with the lights casted on the walls of the castle. The city is somewhat divided into 2 by a small river that runs in the middle of the city with quite a few bridges connecting both sides. Coco said that fish is the thing to eat here so I located a restaurant that is still open and just grabbed a fish dish. On the way back I was whining the whole way claiming that all the souvenier shops are closed and that I couldn't do any shopping. (The fact is we still got a whole day in Salzburg for that).



The next morning we got up to catch the train to Halstatt. It is an extremely beautiful town that is located by the lake. A place that isn't widely known to the tourists around the world yet, except the Koreans and the local Austrians. Why Koreans? Because it was featured in one of the Korean drama and that is also why Coco wants to go there.





The train dropped us off at Halstatt station and we had to take a boat ride to cross the lake to the town. During the whole 3 hours we were there we did nothing but just take pictures like crazy and had a wonderful lunch by the lake. By afternoon we start seeing buses of tourists arriving, mainly Austrians and Koreans and we know it is time for us to leave. So we spent about 5 hours in the train while only get about 3 hours in Halstatt. It's worth it if you ask me.







Without taking a rest we head directly for the Castle after we come back. We took the bus to get to the bottom but Coco wouldn't spend the time waiting in line for the tram to take us up, so we decided to walk up. What a mistake that was! After the hike for the Swan Castle, now this. The worst is that the road is slippery with sand on concrete. So we made it up eventually and walked around, did the castle tour and took some very nice pictures from the top. We also saw a supersize music box. I heard how it sound in the walkie talkie we got from them, but I am more interested at how it works mechanically.

We ended up having dinner at another random restaurant by the street and I had some nice sausages. The coke we got was small, just 0.2 liter. No wonder I don't see many fat people running around.

Pictures.....