Travelling

Leaving Mondsee we headed south west through the Alps to Kirchberg.

I was itching to take photos but there was nowhere to stop, except perhaps for this pumpkin sale...

We did stop briefly at the little town of St Johan.....

And then it was on to our sumptuous (upgraded) apartment just outside of Kirchberg....

Mondsee

The wedding scene in the Sound of Music was filmed in Mondsee, the town we’re staying in, in this church in fact….

It was rainy for our first day here and I didn’t take a single photo of the town.  It’s amazing what a difference a day makes….. 

Salzburg

For a day with a 50% chance of rain predicted we did ok. Salzburg is definitely somewhere to visit in the sun and the blue skies emerged about an hour after we arrived.  Phew.

Apparently parking in the old town of Salzburg is virtually non-existent so we went for the very convenient (and little used) park and ride option.  Wandering around the narrow streets old city centre we saw horses and carriages (which like flowers I find nearly impossible not to photograph), loads of shops and cafes and cute little Austrian men with big smiles… 

And then we walked up to the Schloss perched high over the city.  We did find out later that the castle ticket included the funicular ride up, oh well – more good exercise J.

From the top the views were spectacular…

 

And there was a marionette museum...

Back down in the town there were more horse and carriage photos J. The top left photo is Residenzplatz and was one of the locations used for the Sound of Music.  

...and in the nearby Mozartplatz there is, funnily enough, a statue of Mozart who was born in Salzburg in 1756.  Also within the platz is a mass of huge bean bags, along with a few airline seats, hammocks and pouffes.  The idea is to just plonk and relax, but Daniel, being the intrepid and very sweet-driven little individual he is, spied free Mozart chocolates. 

 

He didn’t say a word, just disappeared for a few seconds and came back with his prize.  When it comes to chocolate and all things sweet – that kid is switched on.  His ears are highly attuned to the sound of a lolly being unwrapped and his nose can sniff out a chocolate hundreds of metres away.  In short he has super-human sweet seeking abilities and doesn’t miss a trick.

Then leaving the old town we got lost, but managed to stumble across this gem – Mirabell Gardens.  It had flowers and blue sky, two of my photographic weaknesses…. 

The gardens were also where the scenes from Do Re Mi from the Sound of Music were filmed.

And for the kids was this slide, probably the steepest and fastest they've every been on and according to Daniel as EPIC!

Hallstatt

Hallstatt is a tiny village in the Austrian Alps, about 60kms from where we’re staying in Mondsee. Despite its small size and remote location Hallstatt has a long-standing history as the salt-mining capital of Europe. Left over from ancient inland seas formed hundreds of millions of years ago, the salt is still mined today.

Unfortunately the weather has been atrocious.  Heavy rain and cool, so an underground tour of the Hallstatt salt mines was the obvious choice for the day.   Actually – the mines aren’t so much under the ground as within the mountain and here’s where the tour started….

Up the funicular to the entrance to the salt mine

And then it was a bit of a walk through the mist and rain

Before the tour began we all got kitted out.  It is a constant eight degrees in the mines, but that’s only part of the reason we needed these threads…..

Smurfs ready for action

Within the mines are two wooden slides and these outfits are designed to allow efficient sliding (as Jeremy discovered as he whizzed down slide number two at 33.9 km/hr).

Our guide for this tour was the complete opposite of yesterday’s. Now I don’t want to sound mean, but this guy was most definitely in the wrong job.  He was dull and uninspiring and given the surroundings were dim, dark and damp a little ray of sunshine would have gone a long way.

Still –the tour was good and as well as the slide we rode a mini-train, saw two films and walked about through about a kilometer of tunnels – all within the mountain of course.  At the end of the tour we all got our own little sample of salt.   Now we just need to find some chippies J.

The tiny picturesque town of Hallstatt

Herrenchiemsee Palace

Lake Chiemsee is the largest lake in Bavaria and is home to another one of King Ludwig II extravaganzas – Herrenchiemsee Palace. 

Not content with Neuschwanstein, King Ludwig set about building himself a palace.  True to form, the palace was to be grand and opulent.  It suffered, however, a similar fate to Neuschwanstein and despite the grand intentions neither the palace nor the interior rooms were completed. 

Only 20 of the 70 palace rooms have been decorated and our tour today showed the stark contrast between the bare-bricked unfinished rooms and the extravagant and elaborate detail of the completed ones.  There was so much opulence that it was hard to take it all in.  In one room, the King’s writing desk was made of 16 different types of inlaid wood, in another an unfinished cabinet that several carpenter’s had worked on for 4 years was made from turtle shell inlaid with wooden motifs.  

There were over 50 massive crystal chandeliers, the largest weighing half a tonne.  The dining table sat on an elevator that could be lowered to the floor below where it was laden with food and crockery before being raised again.  The King’s bath, more like a pool, held 60,000 litres of water and took over 8 hours to fill! 

Herrenchiemsee gardens

King Ludwig II was an ardent admirer of French King Louis XIV and Herrenchiemsee was to have been an equivalent to the Palace of Versailles.  It too has a stunning hall of mirrors and huge mirrors, often facing each other to create infinite reflections, feature throughout the completed room.

You're not allowed to photograph inside the palace, so nabbed this from the net.

Our tour guide was brilliant, animated and fun and she made a special effort to include the kids.  For a stopping point designed to break up our Munich – Mondsee journey Herrenchiemsee Palace was a treat.

Scenery en route