Wednesday, July 4, 2012

My Dogs are Barking.

Yesterday I hopped on a train to Salzburg, Austria. After arriving I headed to my hotel to check in before making a plan for the rest of the day. By the time I got there the rain had started. It was raining cats and dogs. I figured that the best thing I could do was to lay down for a few minutes. That few minutes turned into 4 hours, but I don't regret it one bit. When I finally got moving, I donned my rain jacket and headed out. I stopped at the mall to spend some good quality time with air conditioning. They had all kinds of stores and brands that we don't. For example, forever 18.




If I'm going to pick an age to be forever it certainly isn't going to be 18. After I left the mall the real "fun" began. I walked all though the old town. I saw many lovely buildings and statues of Mozart everywhere. About 6:30 I decided to head on back to the hotel. You know those days when you amaze yourself with your directionality.




Yesterday wasn't one of them. I couldn't have found my way out of a paper bag. I walked until it was more natural to keep walking than to stop. All the buildings started to look the same. I kept telling myself that when I got to the end of the street if I couldn't see my hotel I was going to have to consult my map. In finally busted it out at 10. That's three and a half hours lost. Turns out that I was so close, yet so far.
Today was a much different day though. Today my good karma is back. I am having amazing luck. I'm going to attribute it to my American attire. I started the day by going to Mozart's home.




And then I realized I don't really care. Classical music isn't really my thing. What is my thing, you ask? Chocolate covered pretzels. I can't really put into words how excited I was!




After I inhaled my pretzel, I headed up to the castle.




This was my favorite of all the castles I've seen. By the time that I got up there I was sweating so bad that my eyelids were getting stuck open. It was super attractive.
But I loved the castle none the less. I loved that the castle was a impenetrable fortress.




I loved that it was really neat and it offered a fantastic view of Salzburg.




It even had a marionette theater inside with scenes of torture and a view of the dungeons.




That part was creepy.




After I finished the castle, I headed to a village called Grodig. Grodig is at the base of the mountain Untersberg. They offer a cable car to the top which is right around 1900 meters. It is so high that you cant see the top.




The ride up was nice until we crossed over a ridge and were surrounded by clouds. Everything quickly went white. If I was in a Lifetime movie it would have been my end. I would have been about to meet my maker.




But in real life, a cloud moved in and just sat on the top of the mountain. I went ahead and hiked through the clouds to the cross at the top.




It was a surreal experience. I could hear people around me but couldn't see anyone more than 100 feet away. I found a bench and sat down to stare into nothingness.




On the way back down is when I started to panic. I caught the last cable car down for the night. They stuffed us in there like sardines.




I did a quick assessment of everyone's weight verses the weight limit and hoped for the best. I should mention that I am awful at math. When I got to 7,000 pounds i just knew we were doomed.




I did take a picture of all the people in the cable car followed by me doing a scared face just incase the cable snapped. I thought that my phone would be more likely to make it through the fall than i would be and I wanted someone to know that it was overpacked. Luckily we all made it down and I didn't have to come back to haunt the man who packed us all in.
Tomorrow morning Im taking a Sound of Music bike tour. I haven't been on a bike since I took a nasty spill trying to be cool on my bike when I was nine. Not that I'm counting but that was 21 years ago. I can't wait to see how that works out.

Location:Salzburg,Austria

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