Where else could we go?
I mean, we're in Europe, so the possibilities feel endless. We decided to start small - just over the German border into Austria sits the beautiful city of Salzburg, which is where we decided to visit!
We rented a car, one that Emma and Lineke could drive, as it was a manual car, and on Saturday morning around 8 a.m. we picked it up!
Around 8:30 a.m., we were on the road with a full tank of gas and a trunk stuffed full of our things.
It took us about five hours to get to Salzburg. We made only two stops on the way to our hostel!
We kept ourselves occupied for the five hours and made it to Salzburg in what seemed like a way shorter amount of time than five hours!
We got the last parking spot at our hostel, attempted to check in a little early, and headed into the city. We were starving, so that was our first order of business. After that, we wanted to actually do something that afternoon - we settled on visiting the Hohensalzburg castle, which was within view of the hostel.
From our hostel, we had a great view of the Nonnberg Abbey and Hohensalzburg castle
We found a sausage stand in the city and grabbed some food there. Then, we made our way to the base of the castle, and then up!
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Walking around Salzburg towards the Hohensalzburg castle!
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Lineke, Ava, Thea, Emma, and me!
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Saw a poster nearby that was like this and decided to reenact it
We stopped to take a few more pictures as we walked up the huge mountain to get to the castle:
We had about an hour in the castle before it closed, and that was just enough time! The castle was huge and there was a lot to see, but there were not too many people at the time to get into our way. :)
View from the castle
Hohensalzburg castle
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Dancing in the square of the castle
We stumbled upon a beautiful cemetery - it looked a lot like the one from The Sound of Music movie!
St. Peters cemetery in Salzburg
As we continued walking, a very nice British couple snapped a picture of us with Lineke's camera amongst the beauty that is Salzburg.
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On Saturday night, we ate a nice dinner at one of the more local-looking restaurants. I ended up getting a pumpkin pesto pasta, and it was phenomenal!
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Emma, Ava, Thea, me, and Lineke at dinner in Salzburg
That night, we wandered the city as well - we wanted to make the most of our time in the city.
The next morning, we packed everything up, grabbed our free, delicious breakfast and had a nice, lazy day! We wandered around the city still, but we had seen most of what we wanted to see.
We wandered according to the map that we received from the hostel. When we saw a point of interest on the map, we would swing by and see if it was worth seeing.
We got to see the Nonnberg Abbey, the abbey we think was in The Sound of Music. The view from the abbey was beautiful.
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Nonnberg Abbey
The view from the abbey
Our final, and very noteworthy, stop was the Mirabell Gardens.
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We celebrated fall!
Mirabell Gardens - featured in The Sound of Music
Despite the weather getting colder, the gardens were still so very beautiful. We sat in the sun in the middle of the gardens around mid-day to soak up as much Vitamin D as possible!
While we were in the gardens, we saw a man walk up to a bench near the large fountain in the gardens and he set up a fake man - you know the street performers that are painted entirely silver and are completely motionless? Well, it was like that, except this one was not real, so of course it was motionless. We sat for about 20 minutes and enjoyed watching as people wandered by, took pictures, and debated about whether the fake, silver man was real or not.
We decided then, that we should grab some lunch and head home. The drive seemed longer on the way back. I think we were all a little tired from our whirlwind weekend.
We arrived in Reutlingen around 9:00 p.m. and, once we got back to the university, all headed to our rooms.
I had completed my first road trip and it was absolutely a success!
Photos with an asterisk (*) next to them:
Photo Credit to: Lineke De Paep
Photo Credit to: Lineke De Paep
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