A few months ago, we decided we wanted to spend New Years somewhere else than Texas, seeing as we fly through Europe on the way back to the Middle East, somewhere in Europe was the best fit. We finally narrowed it down between Prague and Austria. I've never been to either so I would have been happy with either one, but we decided we wanted a low-key new year so we went to Austria. I was ecstatic because I love The Sound of Music and Austria is on my "must-see countries" list. We also invited Chris's sister, Amy, to join us. We spent 2.5 days in Salzburg and 1 day in Vienna, before flying to London for 1 day before jetting back off to Bahrain.
We left Houston on our way to London complete with 4 bags and 4 carry-ons. We got lucky and got upgraded to Business Class which was a treat! Delta did this for us last year on the flight from hell and it was nice, but more like glorified economy class.
British Airways Business Class was the real deal! Free flowing champagne, seared tuna and flat reclining seatbeds. After actually getting sleep on an airplane, we landed in London safe and soundly.
Our layover wasn't very long for our flight to Vienna, which was nice. Once we landed in VIE, we put all our excess baggage in left luggage, grabbed a bus to the train station and got our tickets to Salzburg. (Our vacation was purely planes, trains and automobiles.) The train ride was about 3 hours but allowed us to get a small nap in which helped us not fall asleep before dinner.
Salzburg was beautiful, it's such a quaint little town. We stayed at a little bed and breakfast called Hotel Weisse Taube - Chris and his family had stayed there when they went almost 15 years ago. Our room was a decent size for European standards, we had 2 separate rooms and a decent sized bathroom. After freshening up, we headed out to grab some dinner and ended up eating at a restaurant called Saran Essbar where we all had Wiener Schnitzel. It.was.delicious. We walked around for a bit before calling it an early night.
30 Dec '09
After breakfast we headed to the HohenSalzburg Fortress. The view from the top was breahtaking! You can see the entire city from the top.
There are 2 parts of Salzburg, Old Town and New Town. We ended up in the Old Town and walked down the famous street Getriedegasse,
past Mozart's childhood home
We went to the Dom St. Rupert Cathedral and then walked around to a lot of booths that were selling trinkets, food and spiced wine. There was also an ice skating rink and right next to that was a statue of Mozart. Luckily, this was also about a minute walk from our B&B.
We got tickets to see a marionette show of Hansel and Gretel at the Salzburger MarionettenTheater, apparently it's a big thing in Austria and the company is really famous, they came to Bahrain last year and do a bunch of shows all over the world! I'm sure it was really good, but we were so jetlagged we all fell asleep in the middle - oops. How the hell do you drag out the story for 2 hours?
After the cultural experience we headed to eat dinner at a place called Zum Fidelen Effen - (The Faithful Ape). We had to share a table with 3 other people (the European way) and they tried to start a conversation, somehow it came out we lived in the Middle East and one of the guys gave me a hard time about not drinking beer and asked if I was Muslim? No, I'm not, I just don't like beer. "Well, then why aren't you drinking?!" Boo.
31 Dec '09
We headed to the New Town and took a long walk, over the Mozart Bridge, climbed up a hundred stairs, and passed a chapel, among other things. The walk was really nice.
New Years' Eve in Salzburg was fantastic. Our hotel was 2 minutes from the center, alcohol was every 5 feet, there was music and people wandering around. Right before midnight we got our champagne and walked to the bridge with 100 of our closest friends to watch the fireworks (Which had been going off since the day before btw), at midnight there was an amazing display of fireworks! We didn't stay out much later because we had to get back and pack to leave the next morning.
1 Jan '10
We took a train back into Vienna. Once there, we hired a taxi to drive us into town. We saw a lot of sights and ate a lot of food (That's all we seemed to do!) I enjoyed Salzburg better just because it was smaller and more quaint. Vienna is still beautiful but has the bigger city feel.
2 Jan '10
Arriving into London in the morning, struggling with our massive amount of bags (Back to left luggage) and then into town to our hotel. Chris's high school bestie, Alex, met us there and took us on a very long walk through London and to eat at Wagamama. After that, Amy and I went shopping, while Chris and Alex went to have a few pints. Eventually they had managed to walk to Hyde Park Corner, so Amy and I strolled through Kensington Park and then Hyde Park to meet them. After that, we did a bit more shopping and then went to eat sushi near Picadilly Circus. I didn't take any pictures because I've been to London several times and it wasn't a "sight-seeing" trip, but more of a layover and wandering trip.
All in all, I would love to go back to Salzburg again someday, it was incredibly relaxing and everyone was so nice and helpful!
xoxo
