Ryan and Duchess displaying VT pride (He's so silly!)
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Monday, October 8, 2007
Our Wonderful Weekend in Salzburg
So, I figured I'd give Linz a break and update the blog for our most recent adventure. This past weekend we traveled to Salzburg (birthplace of Mozart and setting for "The Sound of Music"). This was actually Linz's bday trip...we just delayed it for a week since I had a 3-day weekend.
Salzburg was awesome!! We went on the Sound of Music tour, took a tour of the Bavarian mountains and the salt mines ("Salzburg" translation = salt mountain...who knew?), visited the Hohensalzburg fortress, and on our last night we experienced the Mozart Dinner Concert at the Stiftskeller St. Peter restaurant (which is the oldest restaurant in Europe).
We have tons of pictures, so I'll have to break this down by category....
First we have the Sound of Music tour. I grew up watching this movie, so this was a pretty interesting tour for me. As you may or may not know, the story of the Sound of Music is a true story based on the life of Maria Von Trapp. The tour took us to all the main locations from the movie. Here are some pictures...
This is the Captain's lake house from the movie (although not the real Von Trapp house). If you look closely, you can see the flower garden towards the bottom right. This is where Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer danced during his little "party."
These next two pictures are from the "Do-Re-Mi" song. The first picture is the statue of Pegasus, which the children and Maria danced around. Next is Linz with the gnome statue that the children all pass and tap on the head during the song. Next time you watch the movie, keep an eye out for the gnome. In the park, there's a whole section with like a dozen gnome statues, and we just happened to take a picture of the one that was in the movie...craziness.
Next we have the gazebo from "Sixteen Going on Seventeen" where Liesel and Rolfe sing and dance. Awwww......
And last we have Mondsee Church, which is where the Baron and Maria get married. This is actually well outside of Salzburg...took about 40 minutes by bus to get here...
So, that does it for the Sound of Music stuff. We actually saw more than this, but these were the best pictures.
Now, on to the Bavarian mountain/salt mine tour. Unfortunately, it was rather foggy on Saturday, so we didn't really get any pictures of the Alps. Oh well, guess we'll just have to go back. But the salt mine tour was really good. We had to put on these suites so we wouldn't get salt all over our clothes, and we traveled almost a mile into the mountain by a little rail track. Once in the mountain, we had to venture down. This was accomplished by slides...yup just like at the playground. And eventually we had to cross a salt lake within the mountain in order to get out. If you want to know how they mine the salt....well, look it up yourself, this blog post is already too long....
Here we are in our super-cool salt mine uniforms....
Here is one of the mine shafts....
And here is the salt lake we had to cross...
Next we have our tour of the Hohensalzburg fortress. This is the largest fortress in Europe and was built by Archbishop Gebhard around 1077. I have a lot of pictures for this one....
My favorite pic...you can see the fortress overlooking the city.
Road to the top...
View from the top...
Me and Linz at the top...
Canon overlooking the city...
Ye old toilette...
Armory...
Mask of shame and other torture devices....this was a cool room!
See that house in the middle? That was the executioner's house. They had to separate him from the rest of the village cause apparently no one wanted to be near him!! Hard to believe...
These walls and towers surround the city...you see 'em everywhere.
One of the many passages in the fortress...
Tracks leading up to the fortress. You can pay 10 euros to take the tram or just hike it. Of course, we're in such peak physical condition that we hiked it....and almost lost our lunch in the process...
Alright, and now for the Mozart Dinner Concert. This was our last night there. We had a 3-course dinner while listening to a live string ensemble and 2 operatic singers. I'm not much in to opera, but these people were fantastic. And next to us sat a married couple from Belfast. They had awesome accents! We enjoyed talking to them as much as the concert. Definitely have to make it out to Ireland at some point...
Here we are before the evening began...
Male singer with string ensemble behind him...
Female singer...
And here's a movie clip of the two of them singing 'Papageno! Papagena!' from Mozart's "The Magic Flute." It's too dark to see anything, but you can still hear them...
And now for some miscellaneous photos...
Linz and I in front of one of the many lakes in the lake district...this might actually be Mondsee lake, I don't remember...
Mirabell Palace...this was built by one of the Archbishop's in 1606 for his girlfriend. They ended up having 15 kiddies together. Naughty naughty!
View of the fortress from the Gardens in Mirabell Palace...
Birthplace of Mozart...
Linz looking upon her husband with loving adoration...
There we go...there's the look I was hoping for...
Alright, that will do for now. We took way too many pictures to post them all here. But these were some of the best. Overall, I must say that Salzburg was great. It would have been better if it wasn't as foggy...but can you do? Not sure where our next trip will be, but we'll be sure to take plenty of pics.
Salzburg was awesome!! We went on the Sound of Music tour, took a tour of the Bavarian mountains and the salt mines ("Salzburg" translation = salt mountain...who knew?), visited the Hohensalzburg fortress, and on our last night we experienced the Mozart Dinner Concert at the Stiftskeller St. Peter restaurant (which is the oldest restaurant in Europe).
We have tons of pictures, so I'll have to break this down by category....
First we have the Sound of Music tour. I grew up watching this movie, so this was a pretty interesting tour for me. As you may or may not know, the story of the Sound of Music is a true story based on the life of Maria Von Trapp. The tour took us to all the main locations from the movie. Here are some pictures...
This is the Captain's lake house from the movie (although not the real Von Trapp house). If you look closely, you can see the flower garden towards the bottom right. This is where Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer danced during his little "party."
These next two pictures are from the "Do-Re-Mi" song. The first picture is the statue of Pegasus, which the children and Maria danced around. Next is Linz with the gnome statue that the children all pass and tap on the head during the song. Next time you watch the movie, keep an eye out for the gnome. In the park, there's a whole section with like a dozen gnome statues, and we just happened to take a picture of the one that was in the movie...craziness.
Next we have the gazebo from "Sixteen Going on Seventeen" where Liesel and Rolfe sing and dance. Awwww......
And last we have Mondsee Church, which is where the Baron and Maria get married. This is actually well outside of Salzburg...took about 40 minutes by bus to get here...
So, that does it for the Sound of Music stuff. We actually saw more than this, but these were the best pictures.
Now, on to the Bavarian mountain/salt mine tour. Unfortunately, it was rather foggy on Saturday, so we didn't really get any pictures of the Alps. Oh well, guess we'll just have to go back. But the salt mine tour was really good. We had to put on these suites so we wouldn't get salt all over our clothes, and we traveled almost a mile into the mountain by a little rail track. Once in the mountain, we had to venture down. This was accomplished by slides...yup just like at the playground. And eventually we had to cross a salt lake within the mountain in order to get out. If you want to know how they mine the salt....well, look it up yourself, this blog post is already too long....
Here we are in our super-cool salt mine uniforms....
Here is one of the mine shafts....
And here is the salt lake we had to cross...
Next we have our tour of the Hohensalzburg fortress. This is the largest fortress in Europe and was built by Archbishop Gebhard around 1077. I have a lot of pictures for this one....
My favorite pic...you can see the fortress overlooking the city.
Road to the top...
View from the top...
Me and Linz at the top...
Canon overlooking the city...
Ye old toilette...
Armory...
Mask of shame and other torture devices....this was a cool room!
See that house in the middle? That was the executioner's house. They had to separate him from the rest of the village cause apparently no one wanted to be near him!! Hard to believe...
These walls and towers surround the city...you see 'em everywhere.
One of the many passages in the fortress...
Tracks leading up to the fortress. You can pay 10 euros to take the tram or just hike it. Of course, we're in such peak physical condition that we hiked it....and almost lost our lunch in the process...
Alright, and now for the Mozart Dinner Concert. This was our last night there. We had a 3-course dinner while listening to a live string ensemble and 2 operatic singers. I'm not much in to opera, but these people were fantastic. And next to us sat a married couple from Belfast. They had awesome accents! We enjoyed talking to them as much as the concert. Definitely have to make it out to Ireland at some point...
Here we are before the evening began...
Male singer with string ensemble behind him...
Female singer...
And here's a movie clip of the two of them singing 'Papageno! Papagena!' from Mozart's "The Magic Flute." It's too dark to see anything, but you can still hear them...
And now for some miscellaneous photos...
Linz and I in front of one of the many lakes in the lake district...this might actually be Mondsee lake, I don't remember...
Mirabell Palace...this was built by one of the Archbishop's in 1606 for his girlfriend. They ended up having 15 kiddies together. Naughty naughty!
View of the fortress from the Gardens in Mirabell Palace...
Birthplace of Mozart...
Linz looking upon her husband with loving adoration...
There we go...there's the look I was hoping for...
Alright, that will do for now. We took way too many pictures to post them all here. But these were some of the best. Overall, I must say that Salzburg was great. It would have been better if it wasn't as foggy...but can you do? Not sure where our next trip will be, but we'll be sure to take plenty of pics.
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Guten Tag!
This weekend we are in Salzburg, so check the blog in a few days for pictures of our trip!
Bis später!
Bis später!
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Wien und so weiter...
Lindsey had her 23rd birthday 2 days ago! Saturday we went to a restaurant in the middle of the woods and had some traditional Austrian food and drinks, we will be going back to Waldschinke (sp?) so when we do I'll take some pics. Sunday we went to a restaurant called Figls.
This place is amazing and we will be taking you there if you come visit us. They had a mozarella stuffed pretzel with pesto and vegetables as big as the plate and it was amazing. I had duck, which was my first and a chocolate cake with a roman candle in the middle!! That's right a firework in my birthday cake..in doors! I dont have any pictures of it because we forgot the camera!! But trust me, it was awesome!
It was a fantastic weekend. Today after my german class I toured the city and took some pics for you! Enjoy!
This is the main Vienna Opera House
Here is the front part of the Opera House, that red thing is called a Strassenbahn, one of the many forms of public transportation in Vienna.
Those funky umbrellas are for shading an outdoor cafe called the Mozart Cafe, this is part of the Sacher Hotel. This cafe carries a classic Viennese dessert, the Sachertorte, which is a chocolate torte with a layer of peach filling.
To the right is an art museum, which I really want to go to!
This is a cool statue in front of the Spanish riding school.
Bicycles and vespas are everywhere!
This is a walkway connected to the Vienna Opera House.
Modern building in Stephansplatz.
Outdoor Cafe and Konditorei at Stephansplatz.
Church surrounded by buildings in Stephansplatz, we have not been inside yet! I think it's called St. Peter's Church...but I'm not 100% sure.
Little ally with shops.
Spanish riding school
These two videos are of Stephansplatz and the Stephansdom (the big church), which are right in the middle of the city. This is the main shopping, business and dining area of Vienna!
This place is amazing and we will be taking you there if you come visit us. They had a mozarella stuffed pretzel with pesto and vegetables as big as the plate and it was amazing. I had duck, which was my first and a chocolate cake with a roman candle in the middle!! That's right a firework in my birthday cake..in doors! I dont have any pictures of it because we forgot the camera!! But trust me, it was awesome!
It was a fantastic weekend. Today after my german class I toured the city and took some pics for you! Enjoy!
This is the main Vienna Opera House
Here is the front part of the Opera House, that red thing is called a Strassenbahn, one of the many forms of public transportation in Vienna.
Those funky umbrellas are for shading an outdoor cafe called the Mozart Cafe, this is part of the Sacher Hotel. This cafe carries a classic Viennese dessert, the Sachertorte, which is a chocolate torte with a layer of peach filling.
To the right is an art museum, which I really want to go to!
This is a cool statue in front of the Spanish riding school.
Bicycles and vespas are everywhere!
This is a walkway connected to the Vienna Opera House.
Modern building in Stephansplatz.
Outdoor Cafe and Konditorei at Stephansplatz.
Church surrounded by buildings in Stephansplatz, we have not been inside yet! I think it's called St. Peter's Church...but I'm not 100% sure.
Little ally with shops.
Spanish riding schoolThese two videos are of Stephansplatz and the Stephansdom (the big church), which are right in the middle of the city. This is the main shopping, business and dining area of Vienna!
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