The next morning we headed over to our next stop – Salzburg. Prior to leaving on my trip I bought my train tickets directly through the ÖBB website. If you buy tickets well in advance, you can get what is called a Sparschiene ticket, which is essentially a discount ticket. Instead of paying €55 for a regular ticket, I only paid €19 for it, so I definitely recommend purchasing tickets ahead of time! 


The journey to Salzburg took a little under 3 hours and we arrived in the city around noon. It took us a while to locate our hotel, which was a 15 minute walk from the train station. After dropping off our bags, we headed towards Mirabell Gardens. Mirabell Gardens is of course one of the locations where they filmed The Sound of Music. It’s a must-see spot if you are a huge fan of the movie.


As it was well past lunch time, we made a stop across the street to have a quick bite, then it was off towards Altstadt, which is the old town. Along the way we passed by Mozart’s Residence and crossed the Salzach River, then finally made it to Getreidegasse, which is Salzburg’s famous shopping street. A lot of the historic houses have been turned into commercial buildings, but you can still find Mozart’s birthplace at No. 9 Getreidegasse.

The one place I wanted to visit in the Altstadt was St Peter’s Abbey, which is another Sound of Music filming location. The church and cemetery are free to enter, but we paid the extra admission to go inside the catacombs. There’s a small viewing platform inside and it’s worth visiting just for the view. 


By 5pm we took the funicular up to Hohensalzburg Fortress, where I had made reservations for dinner that evening. Our reservations weren’t until 6pm, but that gave us enough time to tour the fortress and admire the city from the top. Afterwards we had a really nice 3-course dinner, which was followed by a concert later that evening.

Once dinner ended we slowly made our way to the Golden Hall for the start of the concert. The set list for that evening was a Mozart ensemble and it was performed by a string quartet. The concert lasted under two hours with an intermission in between. I never thought I would be able to enjoy a performance inside a fortress, so just for that experience it was well worth the price.


After the concert ended we took the funicular down the mountain. There wasn’t an easy way to get back, so it was a bit of a walk to our hotel. At least the nighttime scenery made up for it. =)