Postcard from Austria.

Austria is one of those places where it looks like what you want Europe to look like. 

Palaces and castles and frozen water fountains. Nice. (Mirabell Palace, Salzburg)

Four days in Austria isn't much, but I got an idea of this place. It's not high on my lust of places I necessarily need to revisit, but I will include Vienna when I do that Prague to Budapest trip I wanna do. 

These shoes are meant for walking around the mall. Ice, snow, and slush? Not so much. (Innsbruck)

That's more like it. (Salzburg)

I missed my train out of Venice which meant two less hours than I wanted in Innsbruck. Honestly, that probably worked out in my favor since Verona was charming and I don't winter sport. I felt like I walked all of Innsbruck I needed to walk in the first hour but had fun backtracking down alleys and walking along the river for a bit.  

Okay. My feet are numb and the sun is going down. Onward to Salzburg!

What do you know about Salzburg? If you said anything besides, "didn't Mozart live there," you know more than me. Something, something, I've heard the hills are alive or something as well. Don't really like musicals; never saw the Sound of Music. 

Well, of course I went to the brewery. I'm me. 

Every city I go to, people are always trying to push those damned City Cards on me. You know. 24 hours free public transportation! Discounts and free entrance to top attractions! This is annoying. One, I happen to like walking. Unless it is more than an hour with nothing interesting on the way through dangerous areas, I'd rather walk than take the bus or a cab or whatever. The Salzburg card was €45 for two days and, yes, covered what looked like every museum in the city. 

I physically can handle 2km. 

  

I, however, to bring us to point two, only wanted to go to the fortress and the brewery which where only 45 min apart. 6.50 for the fortress one day and 11.50 for the brewery the next. I feel like, unless you know you are going to be hitting a lot of museums in quick succession, those cards are like cable TV. You feel like you have to get the most of them. Instead of going slow and just enjoying what you see, it's like a punchcard rally to see how many boxes, how much "value," you can get. 

I'm cool with just admiring the view for a bit. 

Yeah, I could have gone to Mozart's birth home and then checked out his apartment, but... Standing in the building and going, "hmmm, neat" was good enough for me. 

Statue of Mozart. At first I thought it was a woman and didn't look. 

It's a short one today but... Yep.