Day 78 8 June 2015 Salzburg

Today was a 1½ bus trip to a lovely city.  We stopped along the way The Old Town was attractive but it was a little overcast. Our tour guide told us to go to the fortress that towers above Salzburg (with three museums) if the weather was good.

The Sound of Music was filmed here and they have a Sound of Music Hop On Hop Off bus. Now I have not seen the film, but we visited the gazebo where they filmed the song “I am 16 going on 17” and they had us sing it as a group.  How Christopher Plummer got away singing that song I have no idea.  We did the hotel he stayed at and he was popular with the locals as he was always shouting the bar. 

The shop signs can’t change but check out the sign, apparently it used to be a wine shop as you can’t really change the sign.

We also saw where Mozart was born and also lived. Lunch was at the Siftskeller St. Peter which is the oldest restaurant in the world having been established in 803 AD. The food was OK and the apple strudel and cream above average. 

They tried to sit 9 of us on a table designed to seat 6 comfortably but we essentially refused as they were three of us squashed together at one end.  The waitress claimed that they have had 10 people sit at the table but the plates were quite large so I doubt they could do that. They allowed Elizabeth and me to sit at a two person table by ourselves. 

We saw another impressive cathedral dedicated to St Rupert and St Virgil complete with a crypt. In the crypt they had a multimedia display that would project images onto the wall.  This one was a warlock type creature although the fram I tokk makes it look like a T-Rex.The problem (according the other passengers) was that once lunch was over there wasn’t enough time to go shopping (disappointing the women) or do anything in depth like visit a museum (disappointing the men). 

From the ship we could see the Walhalla Memorial, based on the Greek Parthenon.   It was built to commemorate German military, political and scientific prowess and has the names of all the German tribes recorded.  It’s like a Hall of Fame.  It was built between 1830 and 1842.