Weekend 5: Salzburg and Werfen, Austria

This weekend's adventure took us to Salzburg. We ventured around Metz on Friday night before our 11:30 pm train. Then we sat (well... laid in our couchette) for two hours for a reason unbeknownst to us. This caused us to miss our connection train from Munich to Salzburg the following morning. But we found a Starbucks (oh how I've missed blueberry muffins) to fill our time while we waited for the next train.

View from the train from Munich to Salzburg

Then we arrived in Salzburg and found our adorable hostel. Which was more like an apartment hotel! It was great -- we had our own room, bathroom, kitchen area, etc.

Mary Margaret flopped on our wonderful bed :)

 Then we ventured out into the Old Town area for some lunch. When we got off the bus we happened upon Mozart's residence and the Mirabell Gardens.

Mirabell Garden

The Mirabell Gardens contain this statue of Pegasus where the von Trapp children practice the song "Do-Re-Mi"

Pegasus statue

Me and the painted Sound of Music cow

Then we ventured over to Mozart's Residence and took a tour of the museum housed there. It was amazing to see his house and learn about his family. At that point we decided it was time for a nap (because we were exhausted from traveling, etc.) After our naps we were ready to head to dinner at Stiegl Keller - a beer garden on a hilltop overlooking Salzburg. 

 Salzburg on our way to dinner

Me and Salzburg :)

Giant chess set!

Sunset view of Salzburg from the beer garden

Our grapefruit flavored beer -- it was delicious

More sunset views of Salzburg

Sunday afternoon we had brunch at the fantastic restaurant again. I had a BAGEL! with egg and cheese. Forgot how much I've missed bagels. Then we took an adventure out to Werfen which is about a 40  minute train ride outside of Salzburg. Werfen is home to the largest ice cave in the world! (Eisreisenwelt) It was one of the coolest experiences I've ever had. We took a bus from the train station to the ticket building (pictured right) where we bought tickets for the lift and the ice cave itself.

View of Werfen on the bus ride from the train station to Eisriesenwelt

Then we hiked about 20 minutes to the lifts. See pictures below from the hike. It was extremely inclined but had beautiful views (as you can see from the pictures) so it was totally worth it! Once we got on the lift it took us about 3 minutes up where we had another 20 minute hike until we reached the ice cave itself.

Just having fun on our hike up!

Me and the Austrian Alps

View of the Alps on the hike

View of Werfen

That's the ice cave!

View from the cave

Me and the cave

There's no electricity in the cave so we carried little lamps to light the way in the cave! The guides lit strings of magnesium to light up the ice sculptures inside and create bright light to help us see.

At the door of the cave, the winds reach about 90 km/hr (approx. 55 mph) so when trying to enter the cave we were pushed back out by the winds. It made getting into the cave a struggle! But on the way out the winds pushed us out so we had to break into a run to catch up with them. Also, inside the cave we had the opportunity to turn out all of our lamps to create total darkness. Your eyes won't adjust. You can even wave your hand in front of your face and you'll think you see a shadow but it's a trick played on you by your brain! I experienced this feeling only one other time at Dialogue in the Dark in Atlantic Station. What an amazing experience.

For lack of being able to take pictures, I have decided to include the website link to all of their photos. I was disappointed to find that the reason they don't want you to take pictures is "it'll take too long for the tour" ....I'll snap pictures quickly if I can just have some pictures of the coolest, largest ice cave in the world. Oh well, this website will have to suffice at showing just how amazing it was in there.

http://www.eisriesenwelt.at/site/content/CB_ContentShow.php?coType=photos#

Anyways, Salzburg was a fantastic weekend. Sorry for the lack of writing in this post -- mainly pictures -- but as they say: a picture is worth a thousand words! :)