Our original plans for our vacation in Europe were to see Greece and Italy, but my daughters really wanted to see Austria as well. Since we were renting a car in Italy, it looked like a short excursion to Austria could fit into our plans. I really needed to visualize how to do this, so I pulled the map of Europe out of my suitcase to see which cities looked closest to the ones we would be visiting in Italy. Salzburg was almost directly north of Venice. If we were to go to one place in Austria, the appeal of Salzburg was the most desirable, after all, The Sound of Music is our family's all time favorite musical! Vienna appeared more east, and Innsbruck, more to the west. During or stay in Venice, we found an internet cafe (the internet at our hotel was not working while we were staying there). I looked to see what kind of hotels were available in Salzburg in our price range, and saw that I was given a choice of city or mountain hotels, and was immediately drawn to the mountain hotels. They reminded me of the scene where Julie Andrews had spun around as she had sung "the hills are alive with the sound of music!"
The next day we set the GPS to the hotel's address and were happy that the ride was only 4 hours from Venice! It was a beautiful drive as we came closer and closer to the Alps, passing clear streams and small mountain towns. When we finally arrived at our hotel, we were so pleased that we asked if we could extend our stay for an additional night. We ate a hearty lunch at the hotel. We ordered 4 entrees, as I planned to share with my youngest daughter. In Italy, 4 entrees might not have been enough food, but at our hotel restaurant in Austria, 2 would have fed all of us well! After lunch the girls changed into some pretty dresses, put wild flowers in their hair and ran through the meadows like Julie Andrews! I looked into the Sound of music tour, but since we had the car, decided to just plug the tour itinerary into the GPS and this way see other places of interest along the way and go at our own pace. We took our 2nd day in Salzburg to do all this, and by the end of the day we were all exhausted but very happy with all we saw. In retrospect, I think we could have enjoyed staying one or two more days. There was a lot to do in the area. I did not realize it is also quite close to Munich, Germany and the Black Forest. My advice is Salzburg should have a minimum of 3 days!
After Salzburg we travelled about 2 and a half hours west to Innsbruck. The mountains are really spectacular, although they were not as snow covered as I had remembered them on a summer trip I made in college. Innsbruck was the only place where we experienced rain during our entire 3 and a half week stay in Europe, yet it was still a beautiful place. I think the people who live in that area must be very health conscience. In spite of the rain, many people walked with umbrellas, were out for a jog, or riding on bicycles. Austria in general was clean and green! It was a short visit, but one of our top places that we visited. And a few added plusses- it seemed less expensive to stay in Austria than in Italy, it is a small country with lots to see and do within short distances, and if you live in Hawaii or Asia, and are used to eating rice regularly, we saw lots of Chinese Restaurants around! We actually took a late night stroll to a Chinese restaurant around the corner from our hotel and brought back some take out fried rice, satisfying that craving to last us the final week of our trip.
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