once an austrian went yodelling...

and he got rained out.

It was ripping hot in Italy, but today it rained in Salzburg, and we got wet.

The day started well, with a sleep-in and the realization that unlike Italian and French hostels, Austrian ones know how to do breakfast. We had a buffet of fresh Kaiser rolls, fantastic jams, meats, cheeses, carrot cake, hard boiled eggs, cereal, fresh coffee. We feasted.

We then sat around for a couple hours, chatting to girls in our room and looking at the various tours we can do in this town. By lunch time we had resolved to take a boat tour up the river to Schloss Helbrunn, a 400-year old palace that was built as a day retreat for the prince at the time. It has some crazy extensive gardens, including a bunch of weirdy grottoes (the original hugh, I commented) and these crazy trick fountains that the tour guide seemed to enjoy using to get us wet. Never mind that it´s raining and we´re a twenty minute bus ride from Salzburg. This was like being in the front row at the killer whale exhibit at the aquarium. We got wet.

Despite our wet and coldness, we toured the inside of the palace as well, not too big, just 10 rooms or so, and the highlight was the music room, no bigger than an average living room, which had such a fantastic acoustic that we decided to sing a bit of a Taize round, and it was quite fun.

Afterwards we decided it was time for lunch, and we stopped at a little cafe on the way back to our hostel where a friendly Austrian man provided me with a wonderful cream of vegetable soup and Michelle with a piping hot apple strudel. It´s so close to the hostel that he must get other tourists in there, but it felt like a neighbourhood restaurant, with old men coming in for a beer and little kids getting ice cream and brownies. It was great.

I´ve been fighting a cold, and this weather certainly is not helping, so I took a nap after that, and then we wandered around town for awhile before finding dinner, at Bio Bistro Spicy Spices, a vegetarian Indian restaurant that is highly recommend by Lonely Planet. It was good stuff, although admittedly it was not spicy enough to clear out my sinuses as I had hoped.

Oh well, apparently tomorrow is supposed to clear up, so maybe we´ll do the Fraulein Maria Bicycle Tour, and certainly the birthplace of Mozart.

Mostly I´m just excited for another breakfast feast!