Views from Fortress Hohensalzburg

Salzburg, Austria

This post is long overdue considering my parents were visiting over a month ago, but better late than never? Since they had yet to travel Europe by train we decided to use the Deutsch Bahn to travel down to Salzburg, Austria. Tricky, right? You can actually use Germany's rail system in Austria AND we were able to use the regional Bayern pass to get down there. Bonus savings! 

The weather was much more mild than we were all expecting and we got lucky when the forecasted rain for our trip never showed up! We explored the Old Town where we were able to see St. Peter's Abbey then ventured to Hohensalzburg Castle for some amazing views of the city- but that's for another post.  We also walked to the Mirabell Palace. The pictures we took in the Mirabell Gardens with the Hohensalzburg in the background were some of my favorite pictures from the trip. 

Salzburg had a few surprises for us as well. Near the Salzburg Residence the city set up an ice skating rink where my mom spent the evening skating away. How neat to say you went ice skating in Austria. My dad also found a really unique restaurant on TripAdvisor that was outside of the city center and "tourist area". Family owned and operated 'Pasta e Vino' is a small, crowded Italian restaurant with no menu! At 'Pasta e Vino' your waiter tells you verbally what you main course options are based on what is made fresh that day. The menu constantly changes, but I'm sure it is all delicious! Our options that night were a spinach & salmon lasagna and a tomato & bacon spaghetti. It was a really unique experience and a nice change of pace from Austrian and German food.

Skiing the Austrian Alps

We skied and snowboarded for two days in St. Johann in Tirol at Berg Bahnen. Surprise, surprise- but skiing the Austrian Alps did not disappoint. Definitely the best skiing of my life. The snow was perfect even for late season, spring skiing. The runs were probably on average 15 minutes long. Amazing compared to the short runs we were used to on the east coast on the Appalachian mountains. The first day we got our "ski legs" back and mostly stayed toward the bottom half of the mountain. I have to admit I was a little timid to go to the top of the mountain in THE ALPS. Ross probably would have gone all the way up on his second run, but by the end of the day we made it to the top of the mountain and it wasn't that bad. Turns out we're not shabby skiers/snowboarders for east coast Americans. :) We held our own and didn't embarrass ourselves by falling in front of these European pros. 

Added benefit of skiing from the top of the mountain..... the view. 

We also took a couple videos on my waterproof Olympus camera. It's an older camera and not the best quality, but I'm still glad we decided to film our trip. In the first video Ross started filming at the top of the mountain. Amazing video! The second video I took of Ross snowboarding down the bottom half of the mountain. Enjoy! :)