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| See! Proof! |
In the morning, Sameer and I met up early, rented bikes from the hostel and rode around the city. It was unbelievably beautiful!
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| Me outside some famous garden |
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| Sunrise over the river |
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| Sameer is much better at directions and cycling than I am. So, I pretty much just followed him around all day. |
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| And made him stop to take pictures of me every two seconds! |
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| Incroyable |
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| Cool building behind me |
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| Look at the reflections! |
We had heard that the fortress overlooking the city was a must do of Salzburg. So we cycled on over and explored the shops around the old part of town before going up.
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| Me with the Mozart statue #music |
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| winter wonderland |
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| Greetings from Salzburg! See how I was way too excited? :) |
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| I made Sameer come in to this really cool decoration shop! It was just FILLED with real eggs that had been drained and painted with beautiful designs. Sameer was bored. |
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| It's like going down the rabbit hole in there |
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| Easter Eggs! |
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| Christmas Eggs! |
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| Anytime Eggs! |
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| It was unreal |
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| Eventually, I realized that Sameer was nowhere to be found in this cave of wonders. He had gone to find a bank. |
After that we took the tram up the steep steep slope to the old fortress (castle).
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| Panorama view. So beautiful |
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| Awkward cliff selfie |
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| For some context of the little cable car thing we had to go up |
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| The hills! They really are hills and not mountains around Salzburg |
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| Castle |
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| I'm in Austria! (see the flag?) |
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| Because it's a German speaking country and it was Christmas, there was of course a Christmas Market inside the fortress courtyard! |
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| Travel Buddies |
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| Who'd have thought that when I met him at the BYU library in 2010 I'd be traveling Austria with him in 2015? |
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| That view |
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| Just to be clear...that's me in the picture |
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| So quaint |
After we came down from the fortress, I got a bite to eat at the old city christmas market (guys, I told you, there were a lot of Christmas Markets on this trip!)
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| It's better to look up |
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| Ta-da! |
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| Chocolate, raspberry, custard, donut thing |
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| Old church |
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| Food truck festival outside old church |
At this point we went to the station and caught a bus into the mountains. We went to a small little town called Saint Gilgans that had cable cars up to the mountaintop!
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| We were worried when we got there because there was so much fog and it didn't look like we would be getting very good views |
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| But then we emerged over the cloud line into an enchanted mountain range |
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| Does't that look like the Tardis flying out of the midst below us? |
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| What do cable cars and showers have in common? Turns out they are ideal settings for singing! I belted my heart out on the way up and down to Sound of Music tunes and Disney classics. Sameer was nice enough to listen to me. |
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| Pretending to be Maria! |
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| Top of the world |
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| I like throwing snow |
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| Magical |
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| I just thought this was a cool angle |
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| It's another world up there |
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| And I finally saw snow for christmas! |
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| Pensive |
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| At the top of the mountain there was this solitary cross that looked quite magestic |
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| Contemplation |
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| It's like Heidi up here |
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| I just couldn't contain my excitement! |
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| Walk down the mountain |
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| The descent |
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| The cable ride down |
After getting back to the bottom of the mountain we were able to catch a bus pretty much immediately which was lucky since we were sort of in the middle of nowhere. We dropped off our bikes and picked up our stuff from the hostel and took the train back to Vienna and parted ways for the evening.
Overall an AWESOME day. Maybe the highlight of my time in Austria! When I get back to Utah, I want to go to the mountains more and just generally be more outdoors-y. Traveling to amazing places has helped me to realise that I live in a very picturesque area myself and that I need to take advantage of it!
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