Salzburg Day 2 - Mozart & More!

July 4th started with lots of Optimism and Patriotism and Excitement! We left our lovely B&B and headed for the Eagle's Nest, which was a little tricky to find. Things moved from optimism and excitement to frustration pretty quickly... When we got there, we realized that it was very overcast and gray and that we would not get our money's worth with the view. So, we decided to head back into Salzburg and hit the rest of our destinations for the day.


One of the first things we saw was this car, which the boys wanted to commemorate: We looked around and finally found, Mozart's Wonhaus, which is the second home his family loved in there in Salzburg. The tour was interesting, but difficult with young children, particularly Victoria. She crawled all over Mozart's famous floor and seemed to fit right in. Maybe she picked up a few germs that will give her some musical genius! For me, the tour was mostly frustration. I couldn't hear much of the audioguide between Tori's screaming and squealing and Daphne's complaining... our day was looking a little on the irritable side!

After the Mozart visit, we headed across the river to have some lunch at a yummy restaurant, we heard about. We all ordered tap water, which cost us only 40 euro cents a glass at this particular establishment. (Sure beats the $15 we spent on 4 glasses of tap water at a nearby Chinese restaurant the following week! ) Here we are on the river- you can see the Fortress in the background, you'll see our pics from there at the end of this post!

After lunch we headed back across the river to our car to retrieve a few things, and then back across the river to see Mozart's birthplace.

And then came the rain. Not just a little rain, but a lot of rain. We walked around searching for the birthplace and Isaac's hood soaked through to his head, my shoes were pooling with water and the girls were both sleeping in the stroller. Our stroller has some excellent rain gear that is, *unfortunately*, in our garage in Utah. Sigh. We tried to cover them with the shades and blankets, but they both got pretty wet. Finally (after Matt and I both searching around independently), we found the birthplace!

We enjoyed this tour a little more. It was shorter and a little easier for the children to appreciate, so maybe that is why! Here we are out front (after a good soak!):

The rain had mostly stopped by the time we came out, so we headed to look around the city some more. We found another gorgeous cathedral- and I know you are starting to say (as am I) you've seen one cathedral, you've seen them all! But, this one was pretty impressive. This one even had a crypt in the bottom where they buried their Religious leaders. Very interesting. Email me for my thoughts on this... if you are interested!

Isaac down in the crypt:

Yay! A picture of Matthew (he begrudglingly allowed me to photograph him- this has more to do with my camera skills than his unwillingness to be photographed!)

The kids and me in front of Mozart's statue:

Here is a shot of the Salzburg Fortress. After we explored the cathedral, we headed over to see this place up close!

We hopped on to the Funiculator, which is a little car thing that lifts you up to the top of the mountain. And here is some footage from the top:

The kids really liked this story about the bull:

Basically, in about 1500, the fortress was attacked by an enemy army who surrounded the fortress trying to starve them out. After using all of their supplies but one bull, the Austrians paraded the bull around the top of the fortress, and then painted it to look like another bull. They paraded the same bull around to suggest that they had plenty of food. The enemy army gave up and left them alone, and thus, the tribute to the bull. I just thought it was funny how much my kiddos liked the story:

As previously mentioned, Tori spent much of the tours crawling all over some very important floors and throwing fits when we wouldn't let her crawl down into holes or onto spiked walls surrounding castles, etc... Here is one such moment. Just to commemorate her day:

I'm pretty sure this isn't how they used the cannons, but Isaac thought it was funny!

One last picture from the top of the Fortress. After our tour here, we came down and walked all the way across Salzburg and loaded our three exhausted children into the car and drove three hours to Vienna. We arrived there at about midnight- stay tuned for our post on Vienna!