We started the day with another train through the beautiful Austrian countryside, taking pictures of the snow covered houses. Our connection was in Mozart's town, Salzburg, Austria. We decided to stop for a few hours instead of heading right to Munich. So we put out luggage into storage and took off for the bus station.
It's always a challenge to figure out how to travel from the station into town, especially for a town that you haven't read about and has no metro. After a bit of legwork, we figured out where to go and took the bus there.
We got off the bus and went directly into a beautiful, old-style town with narrow alleys, tons of small, interconnected squares, and Christmas lights everywhere.
The markets were some of the best we've seen so far. It seemed like a decent amount of tourists, but mostly Austrian and German tourists. The atmosphere was very quaint and fun. Chelsy and I were even playing with these little kids on a big plowed mound of snow.
We were all set to catch the train to Munich with plenty of time to do some things later that night. However, plans sometimes change. Just before we planned to take the bus back to the train station, we saw some stairs heading up a hill. We were initially drawn to the stairs because people kept wiping out on them. I know you're probably thinking we are evil, but we went over there to try to warn people. It's just that they didn't understand English and would wipe out anyway. We tried to get the ice patch up with our shoes but a metal chisel type instrument was probably needed.
Anyway, Chelsy decided to climb the stairs some so I followed. Before you know it, we were a couple of hundred feet up the hill heading towards a castle at the top. We both knew it would kill our schedule, but sometimes the best things are the spontaneous ones.
Here we are, getting the hardest workout of our lives climbing this hill, and we come upon a admission booth. 4 euros each. Might as well, came this far. Very effective placement of that booth. As we get near the top, we can tell this place is going to be amazing. Chelsy somehow goes through an entire camera memory card. Don't worry I had another, just had to delete our wedding pictures off to use it. Come on, computer at home, don't crash while we're gone.
At the top, there is (surprise!) another small Christmas market. They put these things everywhere. Also at the top were these panoramic views which were just awesome.
The pictures fail to show what it was really like. But Chelsy has some good pictures on her camera to remember it by.
At this point our schedule is pretty shot, so we hurry to the bus stop we originally hopped off at. This is where something unexpected happened again, but not really with the greatest results. We hop on the same route we came in on, because the map shows it doing a loop around the town center and going back to the train station. Well, it doesn't do that. It apparently goes off the map and doesn't come back. We figured out something was wrong after about 3 stops in the wrong direction.
No problem, just hop off, catch one in the opposite direction right? According to the semi-American local on the train to do that we'd have to "find a way across the river". Since we are only a few stops from another train station we figure we'll go there and ride a train back to the main station. Well we go to the new station and it's possibly the most depressing, desolate station ever. Two platforms (one each way), completely snow covered, and not a soul in sight except one old woman all by herself on a snow covered platform. I wish I would've taken a picture. To make things worse, the train we need comes about once an hour. After some debate, we find a bus and decide to take it back to the original train station. We only wasted about an hour of our time, but it was an adventure and a story, so it was sorta worth it. That's what we keep telling ourselves anyway.
Because of all this, we get to Munich late (on a Sunday) so everything is closed. We find a bite to eat and that's where we stand now. We're going to get some rest and do some exploring tomorrow. We'll update again after.
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