Vienna and Salzburg

Phew! Finally caught up with my blogging as I sit on the train leaving Austria, sadly. After watching the sound of music at least 200 times throughout my lifetime, I somehow knew I would fall in love with Austria! It is absolutely beautiful. So green, clean, and fresh! Although both Vienna and Salzburg are cities, they felt much more like home to me than many of the other huge cities we've been in! Probably because the ambiance was much more relaxed and in tune with the outdoors! In both places Monica and I rented bikes to make getting around from our hostels and the city, easier! I can say confidently that this is one of the smartest things we've done because biking versus walking saved us a lot of time and allowed us to see much more in both places! The only downfall is perhaps my very sore butt! Haha. Anyway, both places we really enjoyed, but I absolutely loved Salzburg! However when we were in Vienna we did lots of sight seeing and even went to an opera! The opera was one that I had sang pieces of when I was still studying opera so it was kind of fun to see it performed in such a world renowned place of music! 

Oh! I alsmot forgot one of the best parts of Vienna- the worlds most famous chocolate cake we are! I know, I know, cake is gluten. But how was I supposed to resist the most famous cake in the entire world? I couldn't! And I'm surely glad I didn't even try, because it was delicious! 

Besides, cake for lunch was probably our cheapest lunch meal thus far! 

A few of the places we saw included palaces and gardens and we even bikes to a carnival! 

As much as I loved Vienna, I was secretly quite excited to get o Salzburg so we could finally pretend like we were in the sound of music! In fact, our hostel in Salzburg actually played the movie every single night! Last night is the first time I've watched a movie in over 3 weeks! Crazy. Anyway, all day we rode our bikes to a from places we'd seen in the movie as part of a self guided tour we found online and it was so fun! Salzburg is beautiful and the weather was perfect and nowhere we went was ever too crowded! 

We even went to a traditionally beer garden where Monica enjoyed a nice mug and I enjoyed people watching! 

I even found a stand that served grilled fish on a stick- and yes, it was actually the entire fish! 

 Freaky! From there we went to a restaurant a man at the reception of our hostel suggested to us and it was delicious!

I went to bed happy and excited to get to Germany!