Salzburg is awesome! Favourite place so far! We started the day by walking 4 minutes to the tour meeting place, we took a one hour mini-van tour of the city. There were 7 of us, and the tour guide Marco used both Italian and English. We learned that the Mirabell Gardens has 30,000 flowers. There are 2 Mozart houses: the smaller one where he was born (when the family was poor), and the larger one his family moved into when he was 17 and quite famous already. The closest mountain is the Untersberg, where they got all the stone and marble to build Salzburg, and where Salzurg's water now comes from. Salzburg was founded twice: once by the Romans about 15BC, but it became a near ruin by the late 7th century. A bishop named Rupert is credited with the rebirth of Salzburg in 700, when he built a basilica here to convert the pagans. The name Salzburg means "salt castle", because of the barges carrying salt on the Salzach River. The barges had to pay a toll in the 8th century.
We stopped across the lake from Schloss Leopoldskron. A rich prince-archbishop from Italy wanted to live on the ocean but there was none here, so he had the lake and palace built in 1736 (this was after he expelled 22,000 Protestants from Salzburg. No wonder there is only one Protestant church in existence in all of Salzburg). The palace is still owned privately, although it was taken as "German treasure" during WWII, but returned later. Today it used as a place of education. The gazebo from The Sound of Music was built here just for the movie, but afterwards tourists kept climbing the walls to take photographs, so the family gave the gazebo to the city and the city moved it. The scene with Julie Andrews falling out of the boat with the kids was filmed on this lake. Marco told us that the scene had to be shot 3 times, and the youngest kid didn't know how to swim so she had to be fished out of the water and saved by Julie Andrews and the cameraman.
After our tour, we had an hour and a half, so we hightailed it back into the Old Town to see St Peter's Abbey. We didn't quite know where it was, so we asked a monk walking in that general direction, and he was quite helpful as he actually lives there since it is a working abbey with 21 monks. St Peter's Abbey was built in 700 by the aforementioned Saint Rupert, with most of the buildings built in the 17th and 18th century, and we found it to be the most beautiful church we've seen. We walked around back to the cemetary, very unique. Large gravesites and well tended with real flowers. There were catacombs (Petersfriedhof) as well, which were caves in the mountainside where some people are buried.
We bought a "love lock" with our initials on it, and on the way back over the pedestrian bridge (Makartsteg Bridge), we found a spot a locked it on. It's there forever now. We wanted to throw the keys into the river but felt funny about that.
We had a tour booked for the afternoon, and were picked up at our hotel. Little did we know that it was the same tour company, only a 4 minute walk away. We were lucky to get the front seat of the bus. We drove an hour out of Salzburg, and the tour guide Ingo showed us the real Von Trapp family home, which is now being used as a hotel. It was not used in the movie because it was not considered "grand" enough.
Our destination was the Werfen Ice Caves (Eisriesenwelt). It is the largest ice cave in the world, extending more than 42 km. It was opened up to tourists in 1920. When we arrived, there was a long steep hike up, then a 2 minute cable car ride, then yet another steep climb up. We were so tired! Then when the tour started, the guide told us there would be 700 steps to go up, then 700 to go down. Anton actually counted 701 on the way down.
It was actually quite strange to have ice caves so high in elevation, 1656 metres high. They are caused because the cold winter wind blows into the entrance of the caves, chilling the rock and freezing the snow inside. In the spring, water seeps into the caves and adds to the ice formations. There were several spots that had freezing winds blowing, this prevents the formations from melting in the summer. It was about 0 degrees C in the caves, we could see our breath. We were wearing shorts because it was so hot and sunny today, but we had brought warm sweaters. The tour was just over an hour. In 1920 it took 5 to 6 hours. Anton was given an old fashioned iron kerosene lamp to carry, which went out several times in the wind. He asked the guide why we didn't carry flashlights. His answer was, "Because we don't like flashlights here."
When the tour was over, we had a steep climb down to the cable car station. We took advantage of the restaurant and had an early supper. Then the cable car down, and another steep hike down. There was a tunnel that had lights illuminating where the drips were.
The bus ride back took a bit longer because we hit a traffic jam on the autobahn. We had half an hour at the hotel, and then we went to a Salzburger Schloss Konzerte at the Mirabell Palace. The public is not allowed into the palace because it is being used for government offices, so it was nice to have access for the concert. It was held in the beautiful Marble Concert Hall. Mozart himself was a regular performer here when he was young. It was a wonderful string quartet, the first set being Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. We didn't recognize the other sets, some of which were joined by piano. There were 4 sets of music in all, so it went later than we expected. But it was quite enjoyable. "Surprisingly delightful", according to Anton.
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