Day 32-33 The Salt Castle

June 17-18 -- Today's quote: "Look at that view. I'm envious of myself right now. Is that even possible?" SC

The problem with traveling for over 6 weeks is that you have to take days to do some chores even if you are in really cool cities with way too many cool things to do, but when you're running out of clean laundry, you have to forego seeing some of the awesome things. So Saturday ended up being a down day. We had planned to do laundry in the morning, and then head to the lake country in the afternoon and take in a salt mine or a small mountain town, but after laundry, we were all running short on energy, steam, and decision-making skills, so I went back to the hotel for a nap, and the kids played in a really cool playground for several hours. The U.S. could learn a thing or two from European playgrounds.

For church on Sunday, we attended the Salzburg Cathedral. What a treat to listen to a choir, orchestra, and organ as party of the service. We didn't understand much of it, but the music was a great free concert. Only one of the four organs in the church was being played, but we didn't complain. We hiked up a mountain to eat at a cafe for lunch and had views that we thought couldn't be beat as we ate our lunch, but that was before we saw the views we would have at dinner from a different mountaintop restaurant. We did a walking tour of Salzburg in the afternoon, seeing Mozart's residence and the shopping district, the two horse washes (think car wash but for horses) in town, the other churches, and the oldest restaurant in the world where supposedly Charlemagne ate in the 800s. Salzburg does not lack in picturesque scenes around every corner. For dinner, we decided to hike up to the Salzburg Fortress. It was a very steep walk up the mountain, and since we are cheap and didn't want to pay the entrance fee, we had to wait at the top until after the museums closed and could enter the grounds for free. But the hike and the wait were worth it when we saw the view of the city and of the surrounding mountains. The food wasn't even that great but the view was worth paying for.