15 July: Salzburg
Salzburg is a city in Austria of 150,000 people. It was so named because of its salt mines. We are in an outer suburb where there is no sign of life at all. Cars are parked but there's not a sound. We have a complete downstairs apartment to ourselves so we slept very soundly. Then off to the supermarket to search for breakfast food. I find I have absolutely no German at all. I'm not even sure they speak German. So we had to guess from the pictures on the packets. Anyway, it all turned out to be edible. Quite safe with a banana and I found a green zesprI with a New Zealand sticker.
We are a short walk to a bus stop but decided to walk to town to find our way. With only a few wrong turns we came to the Salzach River with its picturesque bridges. Our plan was to find a hop on hop off bus but of course because all the signage is completely incomprehensible we were just bumbling around. Suddenly a bus pulled up behind us so I hopped on. YES!!!  For €16 each we had wheels - all day 😃
So we drove right round unable to sort any of it out to such an extent that lunch was the only solution. If you want gluten free, don't come to Salzburg. Peter was in 7th heaven of course.  The diet of his dreams.
Refreshed we hopped back on another bus, managed to get front seats, and were just the experts second time around. We even knew to disembark by the Mozart Bridge and cross it to the Mozart Plaza which is the tourist draw card. Fortunately we were there before all the tourist coaches came in. Next week there is an international music festival here so it will be a repeat of our Versailles. We now know what "crowd" means in European terms.
Peter was exhausted with the heat (YAY,  the first time in this summer holiday ) so I had to leave him to recover while I did the shops. 😄😃😁😀😊☺
As the heat of the day was wearing off, the tourists were pouring in. A fine time to withdraw to a picturesque Austrian restaurant upstairs away from the tour groups. And THERE I discovered what schnitzel is really like. Oh my!!! I greatly amused the gorgeous waitress and we had a wonderful evening.
Aha, now to get home. Peter decided he didn't want to walk all that way so applied his now fully restored brain to catching a bus which was free because of our other bus ticket. I just trailed along behind - and here we are safely tucked up in our chalet with Peter happily eating the Mozart balls I bought him for being my tour guide.