Salzburg & Werfen - July 3 & 4

Once we finally arrived in Salzberg after the forever long train for Zurich (it seemed) it didn't take too long to find the hostel, although we were dumb and when the wrong way a few times. Since we were arriving late, again, we had to be quiet getting into the room and such, but we finally got to bed, hopefully without disturbing anyone too badly!

Thursday morning, we got up and got ready to go on a day trip to see the Eisriesenwelt ice caves in Werfen, about 2 hours from Salzburg. Although the day got off to a slow start, we eventually got going, and headed off to little Werfen. Once we got there, we had to figure out how to catch the bus up to the ice caves, since we didn't have a car, but luckily we found it and took the bus pretty much straight up the mountain to the base of the ice caves hike! It was about a 20 minute walk up to the base of a cable car, which was probably the fastest and steepest I've ever seen (it saved us a 90 minute hike in about 90 seconds, if that tells you anything) and then we went 15 more minutes to hike up to the ice caves entrance. By this point we were so high up, and it was beautiful, yay for the Austrian Alps! Although it was hot outside, we had to also bring warm clothes, because the temperature in the caves is around freezing, obviously! So we bundled up and got in line for the tour. Kasey got to carry a cool lantern, that was actually lit with a flame, not even a flashlight type thing, and when they opened the doors, we got a blast of freezing air due to the temperature differences inside the cave and outside. The tour was really fun, although cold, and we saw some incredible ice walls and ice formations and all sorts of things. It was crazy to imagine the first explorers going in without the nice walkways we had! Google image search 'Eisriesenwelt' for pictures since I couldn't take any, and can't upload them yet even if I had! The tour was about 75 minutes, and was totally worth all the effort to get there - like I said before, the secret to traveling happiness is something new or different every day! During the walk back down we stopped for postcards and snacks and beer, which luckily did not affect our ability to hike the rest of the way down! I had somehow managed to lose my bus ticket, but luckily the driver had it, so I was well and we cruised back down to Werfen without any incident.

When we got back to Werfen, we made our way to this awesome playground we had seen, which is always one of the best things to do in a city, I think - survey how good the playground equipment is! Haha. Anyway, this one had an awesome tire swing zip line, so it was, by far, the best we had seen! After our playground adventure we got on the train back to Salzburg and arrived in the pouring rain. We tried to wait it out a bit by getting some 'chunky fries' at Burger King, and they actually turned out to be really good. After the rain had subsided a bit, we stopped back by the hostel before trying to find dinner. The really good beer garten that Kasey remembered from being in Salzburg with Lindsey the month before was closed because of the rain, and we couldn't hardly find anywhere else to eat because all the kitchens were closed at restaurants - it was only like 9:30! Oh well. We ended up eating sausages (me) and grilled cheese (Kasey) at a little place that wasn't really still serving food, but took pity on us anyway. After that mild failure, we headed back to the hostel and talked to the nice girls in our room for awhile before bed.

Friday morning (Happy July 4th!) we had planned to go to Eagle's Nest in Germany, which was Hitler's private vacation home/retreat - I have heard it is really cool, but we couldn't figure out enough about the opening times and ticket prices and buses required to feel confident that we could make it back in time for our train, so we decided not to go. I was kind of bummed, but its good if the trip leaves something left to be desired (like I don't already want to go back to most of the places I've been! haha). So instead, we walked up to the abbey where the real Maria (from the Sound of Music... all the sites are in/near Salzburg) lived as a nun, and it was quite the hike up the hill! We couldn't figure out exactly where the entrance was, so we Kasey walked in this door, looking around, and there were two men eating and they invited us in and gave us food - turns out one of the men was a bishop and the cook was a priest, and we saw the nuns walking around and such - Kasey was able to talk to the bishop some, but I know no German, of course, so I was clueless haha. It was funny though, as soon as they found out we were American they wanted to know how we felt about George Bush haha. He's not very popular abroad. Anyway, they fed us all this great food, for free, and it was great because we were so hungry from not really eating the night before! It was straight out of the Bible... they were feeding the tired and the hungry, which just happened to be us! Anyway, it was a crazy experience, and really fun. Afterwards we walked into the church, and then back down to the historical district of the city, and eventually went to the beergarten we had tried to go to the night before and split some schnitzel, since we weren't so hungry after having just eaten at the convent! We had Edelweiss beer, which was good and then I had the song stuck in my head for the rest of the day! Haha. After lunch we got our stuff, and we were off on the train to Vienna!