First thing this morning I dashed out to the nearest supermarket to buy milk to go with our muesli for breakfast. Our hotel room here in Salzburg doesn’t have a kitchen, so there are no bowls and we had to eat our muesli out of coffee cups. With teaspoons. A little dainty, but it worked.
The day dawned rainy our first expedition called for umbrellas. My wife wanted a morning coffee at the nearby Ratio Coffee Shop we went in yesterday, and I added a pain au chocolat to my muesli for a complete breakfast. Then we went back to our room to pick up some things like my camera and prepare for a day out.
We walked back over the river to the Altes Stadt to look around in the light of day, when all of the shops were open. My wife browsed around a few of them as we slowly wended our way to the base of the Festungsbahn funicular, which runs up the steep hill to Festung Hohensalzburg, or Hohensalzburg Fortress. We bought Basic tickets, which gave as a return ride on the funicular and entry to three of the four museums in the fortress. The funicular ride was rapid, taking us up to the fortress in about a minute.
From the top station we walked a circuit of the fortress, stopping at several points along the way for scenic photos from this elevated location. There was a spectacular terrace with dozens of tourists, but then you have to climb a tall flight of stairs to reach the interior of the fortress proper, making the views even more spectacular.
The first museum we saw was a small single room with displays of medieval arms and armour, plus a gift shop. Second was a circuit through some of the historical rooms inside the fortress, including bedrooms and private rooms of the archbishop and various staff, including a cook’s room adjacent to a kitchen, and also a chapel and halls and so on.
Some of these showed original construction of the stone walls from the 11th century. The third museum was one dedicated to string puppets and had several examples of these traditional marionettes from the region. It included one set of the Von Trapp family, but no lonely goatherd.
After completing our circuit of the fortress we returned to the Altes Stadt on the funicular. We grabbed a giant cheese pretzel from a market stall on the Kapitelplatz and shared that as a part of lunch. As we explored more, I also grabbed a small bread roll filled with ham, cheese, and salad from a bakery. We spent a bit of time until we decided to head back to our room to rest for a bit before embarking on an uphill walk to lookout spots on the Kapuzinerberg mountain, directly adjacent to the Neu Stadt area. On the way home we stopped to share a peanut butter cookie as the final part of lunch at a cake shop that made delicious looking cinnamon rolls in various flavours, including one topped with chocolate and a chunk of about four triangles of Toblerone. They looked great, but also extremely filling. I would have loved to try one, but wanted to have some room for dinner in the evening, so we settled for the cookie, which was very good. My wife also stopped in at Ratio again for more coffee.
We did some quick sketching in our room as we rested for a bit. About 15:00 a storm hit and the rain was very heavy for a while. We decided to wait until it passed before climbing the mountain. It had cleared before 16:00 and we left to walk up the steep Stefan-Zeig-Weg street, which led to the Kapuzinerkloster monastery, perched high above the city. We walked past and saw the Mozart Memorial statue, then continued along the narrowing path into the forest. Soon we were surrounded by nothing but trees and the chirping of birds. The path continued leading upwards and was really beautiful.
We reached a lookout point with a view across the river towards the fortress, which was worth the climb. We continued on further until we reached a branch that looped back around to where we began and took that. We could have continued further, but we wanted to get back in time for dinner. It rained a bit along the way. We also passed some small ponds which signs said held toads, frogs, and two species of salamanders.
We got back to our room and dropped my camera and exchanged some other things for the cooler air of the evening, then set out for dinner. Last night was a bit of hit and miss, so I tried using ChatGPT again to get another recommendation for a good local restaurant with decent vegetarian options. It suggested Zwettler’s Wirtshaus, over in the Altes Stadt. I had actually tried this yesterday and looked to get a reservation, but their website said none were available for today. So we decided to risk it and just go there and see if we could get a table.
This turned out to be our lucky night, because when we arrived two people in front of us were shown to a table, but when the waiter turned his attention to us he said they were full at the moment, but we could have seats at the bar if we wanted and eat there. We agreed and grabbed two seats at the corner of the bar. Soon after, however, another couple left a small table right near us and the waiter said we could move there if we wanted. It was a high table with a bench against the wall at stool height and a wooden footrest running along underneath. We both sat on the bench facing out into the restaurant and had a great view of the old wood-panelled interior and the bustle of the waiters rushing to and fro with meals and drinks.
I ordered the schweinsbraten, pork braised in beer with a bread dumpling and sauerkraut.
My wife ordered a vegetable strudel from the seasonal menu. Both our meals were very good. While eating we watched the bustle of the restaurant from our perch and noticed that some of the waiters were wearing lederhosen, including two of the women. I’ve seen men wearing lederhosen before, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen woman wearing them. After our meals we shared a slice of apple strudel for dessert, which was also good.
Dinner done, we explored a little more of the Altes Stadt, walking down streets we hadn’t seen before. We’d completed most of them by the time we decided to turn for home and rest up for the rest of the night.