Trips, Pics, and Tales

After finishing up at the Ice Caves, we still had a full afternoon of sightseeing! Our guide left us off at our hotel, we dropped off our jackets and off we went! Our hotel, the Wolf Dietrich Alstadthotel & Residenz was quite charming. Our room was plenty big enough for both of us and the staff was very friendly. The hotel was located across the river from the Old Town, still in walking distance to pretty much everywhere we wanted to go.  It was a short walk to the river and across to get over to the Old Town, and to where most of the tourist sites were.  At this point we were hungry, and we didn't really have a plan. These GIANT pretzels really called to me, so of course this was my lunch! It's a bit difficult to get a perspective of their size, but I'd say they are about the size of a dinner plate.   So then we wandered around a bit more, and our goal was to find the tourist office to exchange a voucher we had for the Salzburg Card.  This card grants you

We left off at the entrance of the Eisreisenwelt Ice Caves. We made it up the mountain....Alex practically ran up the last section of the climb, I felt as if I barely made it at a crawl. But we were here! We made it into that little hole of an entrance we could see from down below and now we waited for our tour to begin. Yea, that's right, I can finally sit down for 15 minutes!  And be so thrilled that I actually made it up the mountain! The worst part had to be over right? We've been in caves before. When they say there are 1400 steps in the cave, how difficult could they be? ONLY 700 steps are up, and surely there will be plenty of stopping to look at the ice. Finally, our group was ready to go. There were about 8 or so English speaking people and maybe 20 or so German speaking people in our group.  The English speaking got to line up first. The caves are totally dark.  There is no electricity in the caves at all to protect the structures. So, what they do is give e

Alex and I slept well after our first day in Europe! But we were up early and ready for a big day.  A really big day! First though, breakfast! Our hotel had a wonderful included full buffet breakfast, and when one is traveling with a 16 year old teen boy, this is very important! The selection included croissants, sausages, cheeses, eggs, meats, fruits, various pastries, hot and cold cereals and each day there were subtle changes just so you would have a bit of variety. It was a great way for us to start our mornings here in Salzburg! After breakfast, we were ready for the tour Alex was most looking forward to and the one that I was probably the most apprehensive about. The Ice Caves in Werfen,  Eisriesenwelt . While I truly wanted to go to the Ice Caves, this was a physical day, and based on everything I'd read about it, me not being in the most moderately decent physical condition, including having a hip problem, I wasn't sure that I should be, or could even do this walk, or