Leave Vienna for Salzburg

Trained 10 minutes on stationary bike hard and then lifted tris.

Rode to Salzburg and saw tons of “Sound of Music” places. Took lots of pictures.

We are staying at the Hotel Bristol. It is an old building and very nice. Its like staying in a museum. Each room is different and named after different famous people. Cathi and I are in room 240 which is the “Verdi Room” named after Giuseppe Verde (1813-1901). Here is a video tour. There were a couple of plaques on the wall showing what he did. It was in German but I originally thought based on the pictures that he was a playwright or something. Come to find out he is an Italian Opera composer.

The Bristol hotel is so nice! It’s a 5 star place and so far the best hotel. The Marriott’s are nice, but this hotel is so unique and you can feel the history around it. The elevator looks like it was put in at the beginning of the 20th century.

There isn’t a fitness facility or a pool. The Von Trapp kids stayed here in this hotel once. We went on a tour of Salzburg with this very smiley short Blonde girl, “Sabrina”. She took us to the Building where they filmed the dance at the end and Maria and the Captain are out on the balcony. It is the same place where they now store the Veranda. But they locked it so nobody can go inside the glass doors because a while ago some 80 year old lady stumbled and broke her ankle trying to jump from one bench over to the other. Steven said “Leave it to Senior citizens to spoil it for everyone!”

Then we went to the pond where they were in canoes and they tipped over. Next to the pond is the alley where the kids were hanging from trees. Cathi tried to get Steve to climb one of them, but they were very tall and wide. Too big to climb without a ladder. Here is a picture of Cathi trying to get help climbing one.

We walked into one of the most beautiful churches I’ve ever seen. I took some video here. I mentioned to Cathi that “This sure puts the [LDS] temples to shame”. The paintings and sculptures where simply awesome. I also realized why so many visitors are surprised when they aren’t allowed to go in the temple. That’s cause the Catholics let anybody go into their Basilicas and Cathedrals to take pictures and treat it like a landmark rather than a real place of worship.

We went to Mozart’s grave. It started to rain and we stopped there under some shelter for a minute. We noticed that there was some construction going on. These guys were putting up a finish line for a marathon which was to start on Sunday. Cathi and I were sure disappointed that we weren’t going to be in Salzburg on Sunday. That would have been fantastic! We took some pictures by a fountain that had horses spitting water out. We then proceeded on to a park where they had a life size chessboard. There was also a huge modern artpiece next to the chessboard of a huge golden ball with a boy on top. Here is some video of it. I had Cathi take a picture of me pretending to hold up the big golden ball.

We proceeded onto the Salzburg graveyard which had some really old graves (and new ones). It was next to a tall flat side of a mountain and there were what appeared to be crypts going into the mountain with gates protecting the crypts from people entering them.

For dinner, Cathi and I ate in the hotel restaurant with everyone else. We dressed up just a bit. I liked when we went on a cruise how there was a “formal night” and liked how you seem to appreciate the fancy stuff, when you dress the part rather than just go eat gourmet stuff in jeans and a t-shirt.

We both had corn and ham soup which was delicious and then for the main dish, some salmon. Went on a stroll through town and window shopped since it was 9pm and everything was closed. Man those boiled wool german jackets are so expensive! So there goes that possibility.

Found a place where Cathi and I could rent bicycles by the river so we will do that tomorrow morning instead of run. Just before going to bed I flipped through the channels and found a live table tennis match going on which appeared to be a major couple of players. I didn’t catch their names, but I recognized one of the main spectators. Not that I know his name though. I’m really not very good and knowing the world class players names/faces. It was fun to see this on TV, like you would see a basketball game in the US. Why can’t the US get with the table tennis program!