Our trip to Salzburg went well with no problems on our Denver to Chicago to Munich flights.  We spent a couple of hours in Munich before driving to Salzburg where our fall 2013 European trip would officially begin with a return stay at the Hotel Sacher Salzburg which sits on the banks of the usually lovely Salzach River directly across from old town.  I say the usually lovely Salzach as it was not so lovely this time with the river running very high and with debris from the very heavy rains in the area.  Yes, we left flooding at home only to be with flooding on vacation.

We returned to Salzburg after having been here only 10 months ago because in November 2012, we had lousy weather, several key attractions were closed at that time and the summer gardens were long gone.  In addition to staying at the Sacher again which is a no-brainer very high quality repeat, we dined at L’Osteria, a very popular pasta and pizza place (also in 2012), Pizzeria il Centro on Linzergasse (tough to find casual places on a Sunday but the pizza was very good) and St. Peter.  St. Peter was a repeat from 2012 and claims to be the longest serving restaurant in Europe (since 803 CE) which I think means they could say longest serving in Europe and the US and Canada, and…

In addition to just touring around and enjoying the city, we visited Hellbrunn Palace with all of its crazy water features and its gardens, we traveled to Berchtesgarden (Germany), a small town about 30 minutes away through beautiful countryside, Hohenwerfen Fortress which dates to the 11th century and offers great views and a good tour, Liechtensteinklamm, a scenic area near St. Johann which includes a great hike through a canyon cut by glaciers that left high walls, narrow passages and a beautiful stream and falls.  We also re-visited Mirabell Gardens, this time with its beautiful floral displays, Kollegien Church (closed for restoration last year) and the gorgeous little town of Golling.  This downtown was so beautiful you could easily tell they did not have a Wal-Mart to ruin it.

We were fortunate to get a lot of touring in without losing much time to the intermittent heavy rains.  Next we will head for Bavaria.