Day 15: Salzburg (Eric)

Day 15: June 11th, 2019. After the exciting morning of completing the task of washing our clothes, we spent another amazing day exploring this unique city. 

Our first destination was Hellbrunn Palace and the surrounding gardens. The palace is a little outside the city, so we hopped on a city bus, which was included in the cost of the Salzburg Card. The Palace itself was comparatively small by comparison to some of the other European palaces we’ve encountered, but what makes this place unique is the surrounding gardens complete with “trick fountains.” It was built in 1613-1619 by Markus Sittikus von Hohenems, Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg, who apparently was quite the prankster. He built these gardens for the sole purpose of messing with his guests. The tour was very entertaining and actually refreshing as we got sprayed with water several times during our trip through the gardens. 

After the gardens, we took a quick tour of the palace which was definitely not the usual fancy artifacts and history type of museum. It was actually quite unique in the sense that they had a lot of interactive exhibits. It’s worth a walk through, and it doesn’t take too much time and is included in the ticket price of the “trick fountain” tour. 

And it even had this...

The next destination in the Hellbrunn Gardens was the zoo. We might’ve skipped the zoo, but the Salzburg Card includes admission, and we were glad we didn’t. It was a fun zoo, and the animals had plenty of space. In some cases, like the lemurs, they even let them wander a little. It’s something unique that you would never see in the U.S. The walk through the gardens was nice as well. The only downside was that the temperature had risen quite a bit by the time we were walking through the zoo. 

The Walk to the Zoo (we took the scenic route)

Salzburg Zoo Hellbrunn

A visit to the Hellbrunn Gardens would not be complete without a visit to the pavilion that was featured in The Sound of Music. Just like Mozart, the film is mentioned quite frequently in Salzburg. 

We rode the bus back to Salzburg and then hopped on the funicular to get to our final destination of the day, Fortress Hohensalzburg. We were both a little tired at this point, but the views from the top and the fortress itself were amazing. I’ll end with a few pics.