European Mountains and Rivers Day 6 – Salzburg

This morning we headed off on a walking tour of Salzburg in the pouring rain. I had never realised how popular The Sound of Music was with the Chinese, or perhaps it is Mozart. Anyhow the impossibly narrow streets of old Salzburg were packed with masses of Chinese tourists and giant delivery trucks. Not a good combination given the total lack of situational awareness that most Chinese tourists appear to exhibit.

Now I am not a fan of The Sound of Music and have successfully blotted most of the movie from my memory banks, but for those who can remember it, apparently the above two locations featured in some scenes somewhere in the movie.

We then boarded our bus and set off up into the mountains to the little village of Seefeld where we had a horse drawn carriage tour up into the surrounding hills.

Our group was split up into three carriages and two carriage loads had a marvellous time as wrapped in fluffy lambs wool rugs and blankets we followed a mountain trail up through the forests covered in recently fallen snow to a little chalet.

Here we are at the top of the mountain.

One of the horses drawing the third carriage unfortunately had a terminal case of flatulence. Its passengers reported that when ever their carriage hit an uphill grade they would hear a sound like a  bagpipe playing off tune and shortly there after they would be   gasping for breath. They arrived at the top rather the worse for wear and were very reluctant to undertake any return journey by horse power.

We were served the most magnificent strudel then headed back to Seefeld where we boarded our buses for Innsbruck. Here is a shot of the view from our Innsbruck Hotel room.

This hotel had the most bizarre lighting set up you could image. Inside the entrance to the room, rows of tiny switches were packed closely together. You pressed one button to turn a light on, then a different button to turn that light off. The system had a significant lag between pressing the button and the light going on so you tended to press another button creating total confusion. By the bedside table, the switch situation was even worse. An attempt to turn off my bed side light turned every light in the room on, then opened the room’s curtains.