rewind to salzburg

in my ongoing attempt to fill in the details from past cities i've visited, here is a post on salzburg, austria, the second city on jenny & claire's grand tour.  it's actually really odd to look back on these pictures and be reminded again of how beautiful this city was and how much fun we had there.  seems like a million years ago!  we decided to go to salzburg because (a) we wanted to go to austria, but had heard that vienna wasn't the place to go, and (b) we both have an obsession with "the sound of music," which you'll all remember took place in real life, and was filmed for the 1960s movie, in salzburg.  so there you go.  salzburg made the list.

jenny's favorite part of the trip was the "sound of music" bus tour which we took on our first full day there.  mine was wandering up a hill past this sweet church (apparently the only church in salzburg with a orange roof):

and getting to see some really gorgeous views, which i posted on when we were there.

at the top of the hill in the center of town is a fortress, the hohensalzburg castle.  construction began there in the 11th century, and it has been used for various purposes ever since.  the cityscape is dominated by the fortress, so on our second full day in salzburg, through intermittent rain, we hiked up the hill to the castle.  there was a little train you could take up to the top, but it cost a bit more to do that and we figured we could use the exercise.  note: jenny's legs are longer than mine, and this is made more obvious when walking up steep hills.  

this is a view of that fortress from the city level.  the whole town felt like it was just out of a fairy tale.

a pretty lake outside of town.

there is a huge palace in salzburg called the mirabell palace, which some rich guy built for his mistress and their 15 children.  seriously - 15 children with your MISTRESS?  at least she had a huge palace to live in.  the palace is surrounded by the mirabell gardens, which are gorgeous and very nicely maintained.  this is a view through the gardens, with the fortress in the background.

if you've seen "the sound of music" (and frankly - who hasn't, right? right?), you'll remember that julie andrews and the von trapp children run through mirabell gardens singing "do-re-mi."  if you are me and jenny, you sang this song to yourself in a loop as you walked through the gardens.  this is another part of the gardens, and it was also featured in the movie.

look - it's a picture of me and jenny together!  an older british guy took this photo and i don't think he knew how to zoom in, so we're kind of far away.  but i guess you get a nice view of the surroundings; this was also taken in mirabell gardens.

if we fast-forward to the present, it is thursday morning in oxford, and the weather forecast calls for "sunny intervals," which is quite an accurate description of oxford's weather.  what they are omitting from this perky weather forecast is that when it is not sunny it is either drizzling or pouring down rain.  but they are being optimistic, so i will be, too.  i'm off to explore around oxford a bit, do some shopping (for the past week it really has been jeans and sweater weather, particularly in the evenings, and i need more warm clothes!), and get some lunch.  i'm on duty from 4pm until midnight today.

another note about oxford: today's sunrise was at 4:58am and today's sunset is at 9:23pm.  when the sun is out, it's out for a long time!