I’d just like to start by admitting I have never seen The Sound of Music… I never planned on going to Salzburg, but I ended up with a free weekend and decided that I should probably try to see more than one city in the country that I am staying in. And so, I decided that the free Saturday I had was a good enough reason to take a day trip to Salzburg.

The train ride was only 2 1/2 hours long and wasn’t bad at all. It was a nice trip through the country side of Austria. When I arrived, I realized that I didn’t really have any sort of plan on what I was going to do. I grabbed a free map from the tourist information kiosk in the train station and hopped on a tram to the old town section of Salzburg. At the stop I got off, I could see this massive old wall that extended to my right as far as I could see be for it turned left behind the mountain.  (See picture below, because that was a terrible description of how it looked. Also, this view of the wall is from Hohensalzburg Castle) 

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to climb it, so I put the castle off for later in the day and made my way towards the wall. I would also like to point out that I was unaware of how long the wall was, and it took up a lot more time than I planned. I navigated my way through the streets until I found a sketchy little staircase leading upwards. I passed said staircase at first and continued along a street with a steep incline, only to realize that it was necessary to go up the staircase. After many, many steps, I reached the top of the wall and started my trek along the mountain following the path of the wall. I followed the wall all the way until it made a sharp left turn upwards. (reference the picture above for the distance I walked)

(where I stopped walking…)

 

Once I got back off the hill/mountain, I made my way into the old town to find food. I found a cozy little restaurant next to a market and got wiener schnitzel. Next was to find a way up the other hill/mountain to get to Hohensalzburg Castle. After about 15 minutes, I found the gondola like thing to take me up. The view from the castle was pretty sweet, and there were a few displays inside the castle which were interesting. I explored the castle for about an hour and a half. By that point, I was exhausted from my psuedo-hike earlier and decided to call it a day. I grabbed a milkshake, and made my way back to the station around 6. For an impromptu trip, it was quite enjoyable (the train ticket was a bit pricey but whatevs).