Salzburg and Alpine Lakes

Since July 28th is our anniversary and Lisa's birthday, we decided to do a weekend trip to Salzburg. We actually had a hotel in Salzburg, but spent most of our time in St Gilgen. St Gilgen is a small town on Wolfgangsee (Lake Wolfgang) in Austria. Since a picture is worth 1000 words (or more like 5000 of my words), I give you ... St Gilgen

There were a couple of things we wanted to do in St Gilgen. There is a musical instrument museum which Lisa read about and wanted to see and there is a cable car up the mountain, which gives fantastic views of the town and lake. The cable car wasn't letting any one else up since they were worried about thunderstorms, so off we went to the museum.

There were a wide variety of different instruments from all of the world and the curator could play a large number of them. Strings, woodwinds, percussion and .... others. It didn't matter. He had achieved some level of skill in them all.

Here, he is playing a wind instrument from China. He is using circular breathing to keep a constant flow of air going. This isn't a particularly unique technique, but it was still interesting to watch.

Here, he is playing a rock. No, really. A rock. With slits and stuff.

After spending at least an hour wandering the small museum and listening to this multi-talented guy play a bunch of weird instruments, we walked down to the lake.

We drove up the lake to soak in some more scenery and, at one of several pulloffs, Buddy had to let us know he was enjoying the scenery as well.

Here, Lisa stands by the lake taking some pictures herself.

We headed back to Salzburg as it was actually quite warm and we were feeling rather "done". We rested for a bit and decided to walk for a little while before dinner. This is taken from one of the many bridges crossing the Salzach River.

We have seen many Bachelorette parties roaming the streets in the various cities we have been in, but have judiciously avoided them. We finally decided to engage with one of them, and this particular Bride-To-Be was personality plus. Since this day happened to be our 29th anniversary, she asked us for advice. I told her the number 1 rule of our house: If mama ain't happy ain't NOBODY happy. She liked that quite a bit. I hope her groom understands that rule. :)

We had a nice dinner and slept fitfully since it was still rather warm and our hotel (like most buildings in this part of the world) had no A/C. The next morning, I found that a note had been slipped under our door by the woman at the front desk. She said since it was Lisa's birthday, she would like to give us a free breakfast. Don't mind if we do! It was already starting to warm up after breakfast, so we quickly checked out of the hotel and took our stuff to the car before exploring more in Salzburg. We walked up-river a short way and crossed over it to get a closer look at some of the buildings built along the river. I imagine these were homes for the wealthier citizens at some earlier point in Salzburg's history. Now they are businesses, but the buildings are no less pretty because of that.

Coming back, we had a view of Fortress Hohensalzburg, an 11th century fortress on a hill overlooking the city. 

Some other time I might have been tempted to go up to the fortress for a tour and view but it was warming up quite rapidly and it was Houston-humid, so we decided to call it a day and drive back to Munich.

I ended up being a short (~24 hour) trip, but we got to see some beautiful summer sites. I think there will be trips back when the weather is better for walking around and some time when there is a nice blanket of snow on the mountains.