As I started writing this, i just realized how long it has been since I updated this..guess I need to travel more frequently:)
I am Munich for almost a week now, accompanying my husband on his work travel. So, last weekend we just decided to travel to Salzburg (just 2 hours on the local train at a reasonable cost of $26, using the Bayern Ticket). It was a beautiful Saturday morning and we boarded the train at 10:48 am from the Munich Main Station. My husband had already been to this beautiful Austrian city and always wanted to go there with me:) The entire stretch from Munich to Salzburg is extremely serene and the views are breathtaking..The small farms, and villages with the typical European houses, and the mighty snow peaked Alps in the background...indeed a treat to senses! It had snowed in Munich few days before, and the snow had not completed melted, adding to the beauty. We also saw
Chiemsee on the way, and oh my!my!, what a beautiful place it looked...(I would love to visit it sometime in the summers). I just didn't realise how the two hour journey flew and we reached Salzburg at 12.48 pm. We made a quick inquiry at the info point about the travel card and whether our bayern ticket was valid in the city..the answer was a No and the lady at the counter was pretty cold..huh..so we just decided to walk around and explore the city using our offline map ( I use the Triposo guide on my iphone, and it is just so fabulous..tells us what to see, where to eat and shop et al.)
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| Mirabell Castle and Gardens |
We took a left from the main station and move towards the main city. Our first destination was the Mirabell Gardens. It took us roughly 15 mins to reach the pretty gardens of
Mirabell Castle. It is a beautiful place to visit and spend some quiet time..fountains, Pegasus Statue lot of beautiful sculptures and well manicured gardens:) Moraztuem University of Music and Arts is also around the castle.
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| Pigasus Statue in the Mirabell Gardens |
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| Mozart Wohnhaus |
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| Love Padlocks on the bridge |
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| Mozart Birth House |
From there, we walked further in the direction of the city centre and reached the
Mozart Wohnhaus, house where Mozart had lived, on
Makartplatz. We did not have the time to visit the museum inside, so just clicked some pics and moved ahead:).. From there we reached the
Makartsteg Bridge, built over the Salzach river, that gives a breathtaking view of the city. What struck me instantly about this pedestrian bridge was the hundreds of
love padlocks with names of it, symbolizing the eternal love.
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| Lasagne verdura and Pizza Margherita |
Walking down the bridge we reached the old town, which gives you a feel of small quaint pebbled town..We first saw the Mozart's birth place there, the building where he was born and which was converted into a museum in 1800s. The area surrounding the building was buzzing with energy..lot of tourists eating and shopping. We located a nice italian restaurant near it, Spagetti & Co and had a sumptuous vegetarian meal..I can surely recommend this place to lasagna lovers:)..
There are beautiful sovuenier shops, chocolate shops, where one can buy the special
Mozartkugel (chocolate balls, made of hazelnuts and pistachio)..these are extremely popular in the city.
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| Pferdeschwemme |
Around the town we saw many historical buildings, toy museum,
horse pond (Pferdeschwemme). We also saw another horse pond near the salzburg cathedral. These horse ponds were created at the time of Prince Arcbishops. The ponds were dry but looked beautiful nonetheless.
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| Kapitelschwemme |
From there we walked down to the
Residenzplatz, square in the old town that has the main cathedral
(Dom) on one side and Residenz (Bishop′s Palace) and the Neue Residenz (New Bishop′s Palace) and a row of Medieval burgher houses on the others. Next to the Dom is Kapitelplatz, where we saw another beautiful horse pond, Kapitelschwemme,
that dates back to 1732. It was also the home to Pegasus statue which is now in the Mirabell Gardens. A huge golden ball with a human figure on the top also catches the fancy of tourists on Kapitelplatz.
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| Kapitel Platz, Hohensalzburg castle (in the background) |
Overlooking this square is a mighty castle, Festung Hohensalzburg, atop the Festungsberg mountains. One can go up the castle on the Festungsbahn (cable car) or just climb up. Unfortunately, we missed this on this trip because of time constraint. The view of the castle from the Kapitelplatz was extremely splendid.
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| Mozartkugeln |
It was already 4:00pm, and we had planned to board our train back to Munich at 5:09 pm. So we decided to walk back to the main station and do some souvenier shopping. We bought some packs of these special chocolates for us and our friends:)
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| Salzburg City |
All in all it was a great day, and I wish to make another visit to this mesmerizing city in summers, so that I could see the places that I had missed on this trip.
