We spent our first hour in Salzburg wondering how in the hell we booked an Airbnb with no living area. No couch. Seriously. Notably we have air conditioning and a bathtub, neither of which are particularly common.
After much confusion and discussion, I blamed Stephanie for booking one of the few places in town with both an air conditioner and bathtub. Of course, I was blamed for booking a place that is (relatively) cheap.
It was very difficult to find an Airbnb that was even close to our budget in Salzburg. I can only assume that the presence of the bathtub in the photos distorted our thinking. At least we are only here for ten days. Watching television in bed every night isn’t so bad.
Salzburg is adjacent to the Salzach Fluss (river), surrounded by Salzburger Schieferalpen (the Eastern Alps), and overlooked by Festung Hohensalzburg (the fortress). The location is perfect. It is without question my new favorite city.
Old town, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is small and pedestrian only. There is a good mix of restaurants, coffee shops, and stores. The squares are quite spacious, though several of the main roads are somewhat narrow.
Interestingly, at the top of each building, just below the roofline, dates of the original construction and renovation are painted in huge numbers easily readable from street level.
Unfortunately there is one significant downside to Salzburg, a high tourist to area ratio. From mid-morning to early-evening the main roads are packed with slow moving tour groups, which are damn near impossible to dodge. We quickly learned to take side streets and building passageways to navigate around.
To be clear, we don’t mind tourists. Hell, we are tourists. But tour groups are different. Thankfully it is not so bad before 10 AM and after 4 PM, before and after peak tour group chaos.
A local couple told us that tourism right now is about one-third of its pre-pandemic peak. Ugh.
Salzburg’s tourist industry is centered to a substantial degree around (1) The Sound of Music and (2) Mozart. We skipped The Sound of Music Tours, walked past the Mozart Museum, and did not go to any shows.
Instead we spent a half day at Festung Hohensalzburg (the fortress as it is called here), walked the trails atop Mount Mönchesberg, parked ourselves one evening at Augustiner Bräu, the largest beer garden in Austria, enjoyed the museums at DomQuartier, and took the brewery tour at Stiegl Brauwelt.
The fact that Augustiner Bräu is less than a five minute walk from our Airbnb is totally a coincidence.
Festung Hohensalzburg was our first destination in Salzburg. We bought all access tickets online, including trips up and down on the FestungsBahn, a funicular that takes tourists up to the castle in less than a minute versus a twenty minute walk up Mount Mönchesberg.
Unfortunately I misread Google Maps and we ended up walking up the hill to the fortress. It wasn’t a horrible walk, but the funicular would have been nicer. Thankfully Stephanie suppressed all urges to kill me on the spot.
We spent about two hours seeing the sights of the fortress. A tower and several overlooks give a commanding view over Salzburg. The fortress museums, specifically the Rainer-Regimentsmueseum (regiment museum) and the Fürstenzimmer (state rooms) are okay, but nothing spectacular for a foreign visitor.
A small chapel adjacent to the Keutschach Monument is accessible if you simply open the door. It is not marked on the tourist brochure, and we saw no one else even give the door a glance. We stumbled into it quite by accident.
With rain in the forecast, we skipped having drinks and pastries at one of the fortress restaurants and took a quick trip on the funicular back down to old town.
On the opposite side of Mount Mönchesberg from the fortress is the MönchesbergAufzug, an elevator. For €2.80, one is whisked up an elevator inside the mountain, taking 30 seconds to get to the top. There you will find the entrance to the Museum der Moderne, plenty of walking trails, a couple of restaurants, and a hotel or two.
I’d have preferred the twenty minute walk up the mountain, but not Stephanie. So we split the difference. Out for an evening walk, we took the MönchesbergAufzug up and walked down.
We bypassed the modern art museum, took the trails across the top of the mountain, detoured to the outstanding Richterhöhe observation area, wound past the fortress and around to Stift Nonnberg, a convent, before descending back into the city.
It was a fantastic one hour or so walk for us.
In addition to salt, Mozart, and The Sound of Music, Salzburg is known as the beer capital of Austria. We will share highlights of Salzburg’s beer culture in our next post.
Garrett and Stephanie
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