With the ship safely moored in Passau Thursday morning, we hopped on a bus for a day trip to Salzburg, a two-hour drive each way but through some wonderful countryside and some colorful litle Austrian towns. Here are a few pictures I took from the bus on the way, though I'm still not certain how our large bus made it through some of those small towns and streets without clipping something or someone.
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Salzburg is a relatively modern town, but with an older center section known as the "old town," which was our ultimate destination. The town sits at the northern edge of he Alps, the mountain range we saw in the distance on our Wednesday afternoon cruise between Krems and Passau. We exited the bus in the newer part of Salzburg and walked through the lovely Mirabell Gardens to get to one of the bridges spanning the River Salzach, which led us into the "old town" part of the city.
Christian Doppler was born in this house, which sits next to the apartments Mozart's family lived in twenty-five years before Doppler's birth. Doppler is recognized in scientific circles for his work with wave frequency in relation to an observer, but is mostly known to the public for his eponymic observation that a sound moving towards you will sound at a higher pitch than the same sound moving away from you; i.e., the Doppler Effect.
Markartsteg Bridge over the River Salzach in Salzburg. Also known as the Love Lock Bridge, with thousands of locks attached to the bridge fence by couples declaring their undying love.
One of the lanes in the old town. Mozart would have walked down this lane as a boy, though he wouldn't have had the same buying options as today's visitors would have.
This is billed as the narrowest house in Austria: 1.42 meters wide. Looks like a commercial establishment on the ground floor and perhaps living quarters (eighths? sixteenths?) above.
A statue of St Florian stands at the top of a fountain in Salzburg's old town market square. St Florian is the patron saint of flood and fire, and specifically the patron saint of firefighters, although no one seems to know when that latter designation took hold.
This is the Baroque Hall of St Peter Stiftskulinarium Restaurant, part of the (reputedly) oldest restaurant in the world, first mentioned in writing in AD 803. The restaurant is within the walls of St Peter's Abbey in Salzburg. We enjoyed a wonderful lunch in the Baroque Hall along with entertainment in the form of music from The Sound of Music. I took only a few pictures, sitting as I was at a front table with others enjoying lunch and the music and not wanting to disturb anyone enjoying the performance.
Our guide for the trip. Her name was Heidi, and she was responsible for two different groups -- hence the two placards -- from our ship. We were to meet her by the bridge at a certain hour (you can see Patty lurking to the right). One couple didn't make it in time, and we had to hold up our return trip while Heidi rounded them up.
Once back at our ship, I shot a couple more pictures of the colorful buildings across the river. The different colors reminded me of the buildings in Bermuda, sans the stepped-tile roofs.
