We entered Austria in the south and spent some time in Klagenfurt am Wörthersee. Apart from a picture of the Wörthersee by night, we did not take any pictures.
On our way to Steindorf am Ossiacher See, we stopped at a summer toboggan run. It was not the fanciest but the kids had a lot of fun and the view from the parking lot was stunning! Our time in Steindorf was spent at the little beach, where the kids swam till the thunder storms forced us to go indoors.
What was supposed to be a two hour+ trip from Steindorf to Salzburg, turned into a day-filling ordeal. The weather was super bad and we spent a lot of time in traffic jams. When an accident occurs on the highway in Austria, they close off the whole highway and only reopen when everything has been cleared. Everyone moves to a side and stands still, having made a clear path in the middle for emergency vehicles. We witnessed it a few times that day and thought it to be a good system. Even though it meant we ended up being in Salzburg at the end of the day.
Salzburg was amazing! We took a bus into town and started the day off at the Mirabell Palace and its gardens. Mirabell Gardens is one of the most important shooting locations from the musical “The Sound of Music”. We recognized several locations, like Pegasus Fountain and the steps in front of the Rose Hill.
We visited the famous Dwarf Garden, the oldest Dwarf Garden in Europe. The dwarfs go all the way back to the 17th century!
There used to be 28 dwarfs but in the early 19th century, as a consequence of the Enlightenment, the dwarfs were banned from Mirabell Gardens and eventually auctioned off. It took about a hundred years for the people to recognize the value of these dwarfs and then the search for them started. Till this day, 17 have been found and placed back in this little garden. Twelve out of the 28 used to be standing in a circle, each representing a month of the year. Not all are back but we did find June, September, and October!
And of course we never skip a good playground ;)
We walked through the old town, visited Mozart's Birthplace, and spent a lot of time exploring all the old streets and interesting buildings.
On our way up the Festungsberg, towards the Hohensalzburg Fortress, we stopped at the Nonnberg Abbey, where the real Maria entered the Abbey, in 1924, as a postulant intending to become a nun. Scenes of the musical "The Sound of Mucis" have been shot here.
We drove a beautiful road through Austria, spent one more night near Innsbruck, and then we drove through Lichtenstein into Switzerland. Switzerland is the most expensive country in Europe, but also one of the most beautiful ones. We left the Alps for another time to explore and instead spent some time in Murg am Walensee. We had a gorgeous spot, with a clear blue lake and a mountain range as our view.
We spent our last day in Switzerland in Basel, a beautiful city on the river Rhine.
At our lunch spot, we saw a lot of people walking upstream with weird looking bags, which later turned out to be Wickelfisch swim bags. It is a dry bag that doubles as a floaty in the water. What people did: they walked upstream, put their clothes and valuables into this swim bag, rolled the end up to make it waterproof, and then they jumped into the river, holding this bag as a floaty, only to float past us a while later!
We have spent many hours at rivers in Europe, but this was a first to see for us!
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