Day 1: The Importance of Salt
We enjoy a lovely breakfast at the Hofwirt. They have a fancy coffee machine that is a lot of fun. Then we catch a bus to Hellbrunn Palace.
We ride the bus to Hellbrunn with a large group of schoolchildren who are also visiting the palace and join us on the tour of the trick fountains. They seem to really enjoy getting soaked. The palace was the home of Archbishop Sittikus, who enjoyed playing tricks on his guests. However he apparently did not enjoy getting wet himself. The dry spot at the head of the table in the photo below was his.
Trick fountains
Lunch at the fortress
Marionettes
Rick presides over orientation meeting
Beer Garden
The inside of the palace is self-paced and does not get as much press as the gardens, but we enjoy it. Some of the original fountain pieces are displayed, as well as explanations of the inner workings, and fine paintings and beautiful rooms.
We finish up at the palace by late morning, take the bus back to Salzburg, and then ride the funicular up to the Hohensalzburg. It has gotten to be lunchtime, so we stop and lunch at the convenient restaurant at the top. The food is good, but the views are better!
The fortress tour is actually three tours labelled A, B, and C. Tour A includes an audioguide, and we see the dungeon, a room with instruments of torture, a tower with spectacular views, and the Salzburger bull, a kind of organ. Tour B goes through rooms with models of the fortress in different eras, musical instruments, weapons, and everyday objects. Tour C is for the fancy regency rooms and the magical theater, which tells the story of medieval Salzburg, the town that salt built. In addition there is a small marionette museum, and an area where a chapel is being restored.
The snake in the musical instrument room
Spectacular view from the Hohensalzburg
After finishing our tour of the fortress we consider doing the Monchsburg walk, but we know we need to be back at the hotel by 5 for the orientation meeting, so we skip it and return to the hotel for a short break before the meeting.
At 5 we troop down to the breakfast room and meet the other members of our group, including our fearless leaders, Rick and Trish. We have a fun time getting organized. We select buddies for buddy check while eating fruit and sampling Mozart balls, apricot schnapps, and Almdudler. This is followed by an orientation walk, on which we pass the cemetery where Mozart's father was buried, talk about the crosswalk signals (see Rick's blog entry for more), and stopped on the bridge to ponder the importance of salt.
After the walk a number of us stroll down to the Augustiner beer garden for dinner. It is a beautiful evening to be outside. The beer hall itself looks unprepossessing from the outside, and then big and empty inside until you realize that on a pleasant summer evening all the action is downstairs and outdoors under the chestnut trees. After dinner the day is capped by an amazing sunset on the way back to the hotel.
Beverages of the Day:
Apricot Schnapps
Almdudler (an herbal non-alcoholic beverage found all over the Alps)
Practicalities
City: Salzburg
Weather: Sunny, 80s, gorgeous
Hotel: Hofwirt
Sights: Hellbrunn Palace
Hohensalzburg Fortress
Rick Romstad
I logged on to the tour web site the day the final tour documents were to be released and looked at the tour roster. Curiously there was no tour manager listed, although all the tour participants were named. Also curiously there was a tour assistant listed, and I did not think there was usually a tour assistant on this tour. The final clue was that the tour assistant was Trish Feaster, the Travelphile.
I knew that Rick was planning to lead one of the My Way Alpine Europe tours, but until that moment never thought it would end up being ours. Confirmation came a few days later when I actually got the documents emailed to me, and the tour manager was now listed as Rick Romstad.
Bill was immediately excited. I was, too, but I also wasn’t sure I actually wanted to meet the real Rick Steves. I had been travelling with guidebook Rick Steves for a number of years, and I knew the real Rick would be an actual person, not the idealized book version, which isn’t really all Rick anyway since I know those guidebooks have co-authors, editors, and researchers.
I also really wanted to have the typical My Way tour experience, and I suspected this would not be it. In retrospect, some of it probably was the typical experience, and other parts definitely were not.
Trish