Austria - Vienna and Salzburg

Town Hall Vienna

Film Festival Vienna

Sharon relishing some cool mist

Feeding time in the park

St Peters Church Vienna

Roman ruins beneath the pavement Vienna

Mozart???? (artists impression) Salzburg

Salzburg

Monk monastery carved into the cliff Salzburg

Salzburg

Ice Cave (photo stolen off the net) Salzburg

View out of Ice Cave

Austrian Alps

Mountain climb to Ice Cave

Ice Cave Entrance 1700m above sea level 1200m above valley floor

Our host in Vienna was a girl I took caving in February, probably our most random of contacts. But we were welcomed into her apartment and made to feel at home, she even fed us! We were really thankful that we had a few nights here to recover and have some good old quality R & R in a nice place  We spent our time relaxing and mooching around the city, seeing the sights, walking in parks, having picnic’s, walking around the Vienna hills and around amazing Castle gardens. We also went out one night and watched the Berlin Philharmonics on a big screen outside the town hall which was a part of Vienna’s open air music festival month. On the last night we had a nice quiet dinner out at the local Italian restaurant which was just lovely. Not too much to report on this city but it was such a good break from the crazy travel schedule we usually follow!

After our relaxing time in Vienna we where ready once again for onward travel and some joy filled singing of ‘the hills are alive’ in the village of Salzburg where coincidently the sound of music was filmed.
We arrived mid day and after a blisteringly hot and sweaty walk across town with our packs and some dripping meat we had brought with us frozen from Vienna we found our hostel. From the outside and looking in the foyer it appeared to be quite plush…. However it was not all as it seemed. It was nice downstairs and the rooms were not too bad, but there was no kitchen or fridge or anywhere to store food, so the dripping meat which had made a mess had to be discarded. This left us with a dilemma as to what to do about dinner, we didn’t really have enough money to eat out every night and we didn’t feel like bread and tomato for lunch and dinner everyday! We decided after having a wee nap to head out to find a supermarket for some inspiration, of course they were way across the other side of town again and with no directions we gradually circled in on them, three big ones with in 200m of each other! Why don’t they spread them out a bit!?!
Anyway we had found some inspiration and bought a single use disposable coal bbq, some vegetables and sausages and some couscous…. Perfect! A bbq every night and some red wine drunk from the bottle… Classy! We divided the coal into 3rds and I (Andy) cooked on a surface of 10cm by 10cm the meat and the vegetables while Sharon fluttering her eyelashes procured some hot water in our little Tupperware container (thanks Roxy! Has been really handy) from the barman to cook the couscous. We enjoyed these bbq’s for 3 nights and rewarded ourselves on the 4th with some pizza!!

Salzburg is a small town but the second most visited place in Austria so very busy, the main sightseeing areas around town had throngs of people. The town holds very closely to the fact that Mozart was born there so everything is about him, where he was born where he lived, breathed, and sat and so on, they don’t mention however that Mozart disliked Salzburg and thought the people there were ignorant twats (not his actual words but to the same effect)! We explored a neat monastery that was carved out of the cliff right in town and looked in some more stunning churches.

On our last day we did an excursion out of town to the largest ice cave in the world called Eisriesenwelt. This was a limestone cave 1600 metres up a mountain 42km long that is so cold inside that when all the water seeping through the rock enters the cave it turns into ice formations that look similar to stalactites and mites. There was a gondola that carried you up the entrance from a parking lot halfway up the mountain, but as we are el-cheapos we decided to hike it! The day was beautiful, not a cloud in sight and barely a breath of wind, the effect of this making it ridiculously hot!!! The walk climbed over 600m and was a very steep gradient the whole way across loose scree slopes and rocky cliffs with a great view from your feet straight to the valley floor! (Andy- cool! Sharon- eeek!) Once we reached the cave we joined a group of maybe 70 people to be guided on a 1 hour round trip 1km into the cave. Because we were the only people who spoke English as a first language we were put up the front which gave us the best views. The cave is below freezing and the whole time you are walking on stairs constructed above the ice, it is really steep (up to a 70° incline and climbing 700 stairs we reached the highest point of 1800m, the guide carried with him a coil of magnesium which he burned to light the cave, the effect was amazing! The cave was stunning and well worth the expense of getting there and the hike in blistering heat to reach it, we returned to Salzburg late, starving and exhausted, definitely the night to reward ourselves with pizza and beer!