Day 16

T'was our last morning in Salzburg and there was a heap to do. Firstly we had to get some clothes dried so we went hunting for a laundromat, we had looked one up yesterday. When we arrived 15 minutes later at our destination it was the most palatial setup we had ever seen. Soft benches to sit on and wait for your washing or drying, TV screen with something on it and just a generally comfortable feel to it, a place you would be happy to do your washing.

Once that was out of the way we had a quick breakfast then headed out to the bike hire place that we discovered yesterday.

Here are some pictures on the way.

A little sound of music flash back, a scene snapshot!

We arrived at the hire place.

We rented 2 bikes for 2 hours, here was my trusty steed.

After seeing Saizburg on the tour we just couldn't wait to get out on a bike and see it for ourselves. We only had 2 hours which was not nearly long enough but long enough to know that we will be returning to Salzburg, here are a few of pictures.

This is called Mozart's bridge and happens to be where part of the DOE, RA, ME song was filmed, oh look, another scene snapshot from the sound of music.

Unfortunately we were at the other end of the bridge when we took the picture, you will need to trust me that this was the bridge. :)

Some more pictures on route.

Upon finishing the ride we had about 1.5 hours before we needed to be at the train station which was really close (thanks to my awesome travel agent Emma *waves*) so we popped into our favourite cafe for our last coffee in Salzburg.

On the way home I remember something we learnt on the history tour, gold stamps in the foot path.

These are the names of the people that lived in the property they are in front of. They are there in memory because a lot of these people were either deported, sent to concentration camps or murdered in the Second World War. Austria had upwards of 200,000 Jews living there, after the war there were barely 7,000. A little heavy but I think a really great idea to remember and honor those effected by the atrocities.

For those who know me you would probably be aware that I suffer a little bit of anxiety when it gets close to a time when I have to catch something like a train, bus or plane. With this in mind it will be no surprise that we arrived about 45 minutes too early, better safe than sorry I say, especially in a foreign country.

This was the second train trip I had taken in Austria and again it was superb. The seating spacious and comfortable, gave me an hour to work on this blog in fact.

<rant>One thing that really does bug me is the complete lack of good internet connectivity. The wireless services that we have been using have been completely crap, though surprisingly our last room was pretty good. Surely that is something they could get right given how many people use it these days</rant>

We exited the train station and made our way to the Arthouse hotel, recommended by Katy which was a great recommendation, the room was enormous. We settled in and went out for a walk for dinner.

The first place we went was recommend by the hotel, they said it would be quite and only have locals, when we arrived it was the biggest beer garden that I have ever seen and there were thousands of tourist and no tables so we decided to go back down the road and found a quite little place for dinner. We had a shared mixed grill which was ok. We then thought we would make our way into the city and see what was there.

The initial plan was we would catch the train but after having a lot of trouble finding the right train line we bumped into a women that seemed like she knew where she was going but then we realised that she could only speak Italian! I think she misunderstood us and we ended up walking all the way into the town, about 20 minutes so wasn't too bad.

In the middle of town there was a rock concert on so there were heaps of people so we decided to make our way back but try and find some frozen yogurt for supper. We followed the instructions on the map but for the life of us we couldn't find it until we realised it was underground, by the time we got to it it was closed. :(

On the way back we saw an amazing group busking, they even had a piano in the mall! Talk about professional buskers, they were amazing.

Luckily we found a place on the way back to the hotel after having a very average coffee. Got back to the hotel and pottered around until we went to sleep. Not sure what we will get up to tomorrow, a surprise.