This is our third consecutive autumn trip to Europe.  In 2010 and 2011 we did the trips in September.  This year we decided to enjoy our glorious Colorado September at home with our departure then being further delayed by two functions in my home town the first half of October and an educational conference late in the month that I thought would be beneficial in doing my job.  That turned out to be a mistake because the conference was not worth the time and it pushed our trip into mostly November.  With the weather we’ve had, we’ll be coming in September again next year.  Not only is the weather significantly better, we enjoy visiting the European gardens which are obviously gone by this time and we also learned that several venues that we wanted to visit closed at the end of October.

With that background, the weather for the rest of our stay in Salzburg was unpleasant.  Intermittent rain (sometimes very hard) mixed with 30s or barely 40s on all days.  In fact, the Sunday pictured in my “Salzburg” post is the only sunny day we have had through the first twelve days.  But we did manage to visit a few more worthwhile Salzburg sites before heading out in spite of the rain and cold.

In our remaining time we enjoyed Stift St. Peter and the Residenzplatz.  The Schloss Hellbrunn was closed for the season and the beautiful Kollegienkirch was closed for an extended restoration.  And then we headed to Slovakia on Wednesday.

Because a very large abbey in Melk, Austria was also closed for the season, we decided to stop in Linz, Austria on our drive from Salzburg to Bratislava.  Good decision.  We really enjoyed our brief stay in Linz including our best meal of the trip at a little Italian place on a plaza by a parking garage called Mia Cara (www.miacara.at).  It wasn’t just a good meal, it was outstanding.  Then we hustled around the city fighting the wind and freezing rain visiting a few historical sites (they have two cathedrals here), again enjoying the active and varied retail offerings including two very nice downtown malls (i.e. escape from freezing rain) as well as just a generally attractive city.

The pictures accompanying this post again have a disproportionate number of shots of churches.  The obsession not only comes from how grand they are, but how many there are so close together.  I need to research why that is.  In Vienna, Salzburg and Linz, there could be mere feet between these facilities of what I thought is the same denomination.  So in Salzburg, the 10,000 seat cathedral is a few hundred feet from the spectacular Stift St. Peter.  In Linz, the two cathedrals, one seating 20,000, are a few blocks apart.  And in Vienna, it is the same scenario throughout the area of the city in which we spent our time.

This is the second time we have been in Europe during our presidential election.  And during both trips, the locals clearly take a great interest in our politics and are forward with their questions.

We loved Austria.  The countryside is beautiful, the cities we visited were lovely (and in the case of Vienna absolutely grand), and the people friendly and helpful.

Next, Bratislava Slovakia.  Our first former Iron Curtain country.