Video of the Day

The best fountain I've ever seen.




Sorry, it's kinda sideways.

Salzburg!!

This weekend we went to Salzburg!! It was gorgeous and sunny, couldn't have asked for a better weekend. It was even better because we prefaced our journey Thursday night by watching The Sound of Music. It's what every trip to Salzburg requires. We left Friday morning and traveled 3 hours by train. The trip was beautiful, plus we randomly met Krsh, Liz, and Anna's friend Leslie on the train. Luckily Leslie is from a little town near Salzburg and could tell us everything cool to see. Plus we got a little German practice :)


We finally arrived and then spent an extra hour trying to figure out which bus to take in what direction. This was deifinitely complicated by the fact that the hostel was already notorious for "being hard to find." Turns out the thing is pretty much in the middle of the forest. But it worked. Got a top bunk. Can't have everything.

Me while roaming the wilderness of Salzburg trying to find our hostel.

We made our way back into town and made a bee-line for the Hohensalzburg Fortress. Salzburg is an adorable little town tucked into some very steep hills and pretty much sheer cliff-faces. The Fortress was built on the top of one of those hills/cliffs. Rick Steves highly recommended the use of the Funicular(!) up the hill. Turns out it was the shortest FUNicular ever. Hahaha it was kinda funny anyways. We at least got to hear Anna repeat "Havin FUN on the FUNicular" about 15 times :) After consulting Rick again we just kinda wandered through the fortress and through some STRANGE museums. The highlight was definitely the Marionette Museum. It was the creepiest thing ever! Sooo many creepy little puppets just sitting there. We at least got to play with one at the end. The view from the Fortress was also spectacular.

The cute little city streets.

In Kapitalplatz with the Hohensalzburg fortress behind.

Kapitalplatz again, with a giant gold ball with a man statue on top.

Excited about having FUN on the FUNicular.

View from the top.



Cool tree in the courtyard. Everyone was making fun of me for taking lots of pictures of it. Leave me alone, I thought it was cool!

Old original chapel to the Fortress, was built in 1077.

Canons still aimed ready to fire at the Turks, according to our pal Rick Steves.

Creepy marionettes!!

Practicing with this guy and doing VERY poorly :)

yeeeeeeah...

The other museum in the Fortress, something about Salzburg history. These strange little wooden pole soldiers were amusing. Especially with the weird music they were playing.

View from the other side.

A really pretty room.

We went back to the station, collected Laura, took her back to the hostel, and then made our way back to town. We wandered up and down Getreidegasse, the main cutesy touristy street, and found a little pub to have dinner. It was incredibly delicious! We all got such stereotypical Austrian-German food (brats, sauerkraut, potatoes, beer) and our waiters all wore the traditional outfits that we actually saw everywhere! High socks w/ leather capri pants, lederhosen, long dresses with blouses, crazy hats...the works. We actually saw a guy with lederhosen and a polo shirt! So strange. Anyways, the rest of the night was spent just kinda walking around and taking pretty pictures.

Looking down the Salzach River

Such an Austrian dinner: Beer, Bratwurst, Sauerkraut, boiled potatoes = delicious.

Oh Anna.

River at night :)

My favorite picture.

Look at what the Salzburgers can make with bread! Oh boy!

Sweden!! Day 2

On the 2nd day we went to the archipelago! Apparently there are over 24,000 islands in the archipelago around Stockholm. We caught a boat just after noon and headed out! It was a cool old steamboat, which made the trip soooo long, but it was really worth it because we had such wonderful views! The most gorgeous part were the wild swans everywhere. We counted nearly 30 around one island alone.

On the deck

On the bow things got a little crazy. We were pretty much in the splash zone.

We finally got to our little island 2 1/2 hours later. It's called Sodra Grinda and it was the most beautiful little island. It was completely rural and we really saw no signs of life anywhere apart from some tourists on the beach. We hiked a little ways inland, found some sheep, a cafe, and a beautiful beach! So we spent the day sunbathing in the Swedish isles :) Pretty great.

Unloading the steamboat :)

Our welcome :)

The little farm a cafe we stumbled upon.

Sheep!

Our little rocky beach where we lounged for the entire day.

My view.

Snacking on some lunch

So we dared each other to go swimming in the sound (or whatever the body of water was) but only Sofie and I were man enough to take the challenge. The best part was Sofie though, accidentally falling into the water. She was nimbly picking her way towards the water, and was sitting down to test the temperature, and all of a sudden she just slid right in! She had been crouching on a section of slippery sea goo and then just disappeared. She came up screaming and we were all about to die laughing. I almost peed my pants. She kept trying to climb out but would always slide back in down the oozy gooey slime. Sarah was about to die from laughing, I was doubled over on the ground and Myles was busy taking pictures of the whole thing. It was so funny. Finally we got Sofie out and I elected to walk in from the beach, not the rocks :) It was so cold, I could tell why Sofie was yelping!

Sofie trying for the second or third time to pull herself up the slime wall. I meanwhile, was laughing hysterically.

Sooo effing cold!!

Sweden!!

I love RyanAir. Well kindof. As far as airlines go, it's pretty awful. But you just can't beat a $70 round-trip fare to Stockholm!! So once again we boarded a train to Bratislava, then a plane to Stockholm (kind of). We actually flew into a small airport about an hour and a half from the actual Stockholm city center. It was so funny because it looked like RyanAir was the only airline that actually used that "airport." I say "airport" because it was more like a bunch of portables that were somehow fashioned together :) Even though we were so far away, it was actually kind of nice because we got to see so much of the countryside on our trip into town. The only bad part was being incredibly hung over from Matt and Shaun's birthdays the night before.

View of the Archipelago from the plane.

the "airport"

Beautiful swedish countryside :)

On the way we kept joking about spending a day at IKEA to get the "real" Swedish experience.

We arrived in Stockholm late-ish on Friday night and sat in the bus station trying to find our hotel (to the amusement of many Swedes) by trying to read everything out loud. We eventually realized that our hotel was in a place called Älvsjö. Luckily it was only about 10min away by commuter train. We really didn't care since it meant we weren't in yet another hostel. The hotel turned out to be really nice and we got a nice private room with a shared bathroom. Not to mention it was outfitted in almost all IKEA furniture :) The price was also right since we fit 4 people in a 2 person room. Hehe.


The next morning we got up super early and went out for a day on the town, trying to do as much free stuff as we could! Sweden's an expensive place. In restaurants a soda runs about $3 for one glass. Yeah. BUT they have ice cubes!! We couldn't believe our eyes when our coke and water came to us with ice in it. You don't understand how long it's been since any of us have seen ice. Like a million years, that's how long. It was great.

Sarah being amazed to see an ice cube.

Anyhow, back to the story. Oh yeah! It was kinda exciting that Swedish is similar to German. We could actually understand quite a few of the written billboards and ads. We felt so accomplished. I think I may have gotten on some people's nerves by speaking "swedish" all the time and trying to read the boards. We would walk down the street pretending to be Swedes. Our conversations went something like this: "Hinga dinga duuurgen ikea" "Oooh yeeeaahh u betcha!" Maybe you just had to be there.

Ok. Really back to the story. We first went to Gamla Stan, which is the old town island in Stockholm with the Royal Palace, Parliament, etc. It was like London with all of the soldiers that have to keep guard without showing emotion or anything. Except these guards had bayonets. We kept our distance. We went and watched the changing of the guard! It was really cool but also really funny. We all gathered in this big square and a bunch of soldiers marched in, did some other marching drills, and then the band came in on horseback and played marching songs. It was really funny watching these big guys trying to play the tuba on the back of a horse and still trying to control their horse. Very entertaining. The soldiers also did this really funny march/running away thing that made the whole audience laugh. It was definitely entertaining although it ran nearly a 1/2 hour long. We spent the rest of the morning walking around the island, looking at the bay and the ships, and looking at some random buildings.

Sofie and I on the bridge to Gamla Stan.

Entrance to Gamla Stan

Royal Palace

Royal Swedish Guard with a mean looking bayonet.

Changing of the guard

Horseback marching band!

I love the little alleyways in Euorpe! Not sure how these cars are going to get past each other though.

Royal Cathedral

Utilizing the panorama function on my camera

Next we decided to go to Djurgården, which is the large garden island by Stockholm. We walked all the way around the harbor to get there, but it was worth it. On the way I got a bug caught in my shirt and freaked out much to the amusement of Sarah, Sofie, and Myles. I was in the street, felt it, and immediately whipped off my shirt (i had a tank top on under it) and danced around trying to shake it out! Anyways, when we walked over the bridge to the island we saw a food vendor and got some Swedish meatballs (of course!). We were tempted to sample the local specialty "Super roll" which is two boiled hot dogs with mashed potatoes and shrimp salad all rolled into a tortilla. MMMmm right? Yeah...nobody ended up getting that.

The harbor

Super Roll!! Looks good huh?

Mmmm meatballs

The island was so pretty! There were trails everywhere and we walked along this pretty little river with flowers and trees everywhere. And the weather couldn't have been more perfect. It was about 75 degrees (25 centigrad?) without a cloud in the sky. We walked almost the whole length of the island. And we saw swans!! Turns out there are wild swans everywhere in Sweden. They were beautiful but kinda scary. The last thing I wanted was to be attacked by a giant killer swan. Anyways, we spent quite a bit of the afternoon walking around, sun bathing, and finding various places to stick our feet in the water.

Beautiful Tulips in the park

The island was scattered with private homes, restaurants, and museums along the water.

Swans!

View across the water towards the Museum.

I really wish we could have rented a boat :(

Bridge to the island

Outside the Theater

A little later we ventured back into town and Myles and I decided to go to the Absolut Icebar Stockholm. It's a year-round bar made completely out of ice. For $30 you get to go into the bar for 45 min, get a drink, and they give you these huge poncho type things with gloves so you don't freeze. It was a little over price, but Myles and I had lots of fun taking pictures, licking the walls, racing to see who could eat the most of their ice glass, and lots of other obnoxious things :)

Absolut Icebar Stockholm!

Pretty sweet huh?

I got the "Winter City" or something. It was blue.

Yep. The walls are ice too.

Me and Myles in our sweet outfits.

I definitely did not win the glass eating contest.

That was pretty much day one. We went back to the hotel late-ish, grabbed some chinese food to go, watched The Last of the Mohicans in swedish and went to bed.