Since we had limited time in Salzburg yesterday due to our late start and last minute scrounging for a hotel, we spent 1/2 of today wandering the streets of Salzburg and discovering new history. Howevr, we had a 5 hour drive to Venice ahead of us, so we left around noon. We drove through the Alps (literally... there's probably 30 km of tunnels between Austria and Italy) and met with a few delays: for 20 minutes we had a read light for one of the tunnels (no idea why) and then in Italy we had to wait in line at the toll booth for an hour because traffic was so backed up.

We decided to park on the island where it's safer and closer to where we were staying and took a water bus to our hotel. Claire had bought some study materials for the Italian language and she had been able to use it a lot (so many people don't speak English here). The hotel (recommended to us by Susan's former roomie, Christine) is nice and we were glad the staff speak English. We checked in and got our bearings and planned out our evening. We consulted Rick Steves and found an inexpensive pizzeria, which turned out to be excellent (thought the service was a bit slot).

We went to St. Mark's Square to find out where we would be going the next day to save time tomorrow. What a difference between night and day of the city. At 10pm, there were still crowds of people on the square, but during the day there are MOBS of people. Claire bought a great mask for her collection and we had a great evening walking around and listening to the live entertainment on the square (every restaurant seems to have a live quartet playing great music).

Labels: Austria, Europe 2008, Italy

Today we headed to Salzburg. We started out with a bit of a scare about the legality of driving in Austria without an international driver's license, so we were delayed while figuring it out. We finally learned that it was OK - the worst that would happen would be a fine, rather than spending the night in jail and getting the car impounded (our worst fears) so we bid farewell to our German relatives and drove to Salzburg. We relied on our GPS system, "Daniel" (named after the voice we prefer to use on the system) and we had an interesting ride. Daniel took us on crazy narrow roads that might have been for pedestrians only. We got a little concerned, so we called the hostel to make sure we were on the right road only to find tha they had given our beds away as a result of a misunderstanding.

By the time we learned that, it was already 2pm on a Saturday in Salzburg during the annual Mozart festival. We called the Tourist Information booth for suggestions on finding a different place to stay only to learn that the city was 99% booked. We called all of the hotels in our Rick Steves book with no luck. Then, we decided to ask Daniel for the hotels in the area and started calling them. We managed to find one that had two double rooms available and they said they would hold them for us for 30 minutes. Well, Daniel said we were only 3 miles away - the hotel was on the other side of the river, so 30 minutes seemed like plenty of time. Little did we know... The route planned out for us by Daniel took us on more crazy narrow roads through ruins and the fortress on top of the hill. There were pedestrians everywhere and not another car in sight. We finally got to the top of a hill that Daniel wanted us to drive down which was clearly not wide enough for our car, so we decided to follow common sense instead of Daniel. We ended up in Mozart Platz which was closed to vehicular traffic in honor of the Mozart Festival. by then, there were a few other cars behind us, so we pulled over, let them pass, and followed them through the crowds and back to normal roads. What an experience!

Eventually we found the hotel (barely within the promised 30 minutes) and checked in. The rooms were a great value - especially since they charged us for a triple room instead of two doubles. Also, it came with a great breakfast with terrific service. We were quite pleased at our change in plans since it was way better than the hostel we were going to stay at and wasn't that much more expensive.

The rest of the evening was spent seeing the city and the Mozart museum. We went to a spagghetti restaurant for dinner and the stumbled upon an outdoor airing of Don Giovanni. We watched it until we were too cold (and a bit put off by the questionable storyline) and then returned to the warmth of our hotel and retired for the evening.

Labels: Austria, Europe 2008