Stories and Adventures...: Hohensalzburg Castle and Salzburg by Night

After walking around, we hiked up the small mountain to Salzburg Castle. Seeing as it was 85 degrees, Adrienne was unhappy hiking. "I hate exercise" was shouted a few times, as long as "I'm not going to make it!"

But, the view is fabulous!

And it's a 10 minute walk and not worth paying for the cable car thing to take us up.

Due to the heat, I will admit that the hike seemed steeper than I remembered.

Here is Adrienne with Salzburg behind here!

And here I am with Salzburg behind me!

We entered the castle and we walked around the whole castle, including going to the top of the tower, which had a fabulous 360 degree view of the city and surrounding landscape.

Hohensalzburg Castle was owned by various Archbishops. One of these Archbishops was named Gandolphus. Yes, Gandolf.

It is one of the largest Medieval castles in Europe. It was built originally in 1077, then additions were made several times.

The castle itself is very interesting, with lots of different rooms, including very intricate bedrooms and a torture room.

And the view is spectacular. Austria is really one of the most beautiful countries in the world. The nature is fabulous as is the architecture.

Here is Adrienne looking happy about looking at the view.

The castle included a marionette museum, which contained a large collection of alarming looking puppets.

I mean, she is just terrifying.

And look at his face!

They had puppets of the Sound of Music, Mozart and various uprisings against the castle. Or the one peasant uprising. I can't remember because the puppets were too scary.

Here is Adrienne as a knight in the marionette museum.

This horrifying man was part of the peasant uprising.

As was he.

I am not sure why I look so angry. I was not feeling angry.

Just look at those hills!

Here is a fabulous view of the city.

I believe this was the bedchamber.

This Romanesque fortress chapel was discovered underneath the castle. It was built in the early 12th century.

This is the chapel that's within the castle. It was necessary since all the owners were archbishops.

Here's Adrienne looking extremely happy.

We took a tour through the parts of the castle that required a tour, which took us to the top of the castle.

Due to all the people speaking different languages, the tour wasn't so much a tour as a crabby man walking around with us and making us move quickly while we listened to an audio guide.

Adrienne listening to the audio guide with the fantastic view behind her.

And me listening to the audio guide.

The hills are alivveeee

with the sound of musiiccccc

There's the castle from above.

Here is Adrienne sitting on what appears to be cannons.

I had an alarmingly large bug bite that grew. I ended up asking one of the people who worked at the hostel if they had any poisonous spiders in Austria because it was growing before my eyes.

They do not. Thank goodness.

When coming down the tower, there was another sudden stench of diarrhea. We realized it was not just us when a girl came sprinting out of the tower coughing and complaining of the awful smell about a minute after we'd come out. Yikes.

After wandering about the castle, we headed back down the mountain.

The sun was setting, so our attempts to take pictures were foiled.

We were either standing in shadow...

Or looking like we were photo-shopped into our own pictures.

Photo shop...

Shadow...

Photo shop. And Adrienne's serial killer eyebrows.

Adrienne's looking less creepy.

Shadow...

Photo shop...

Here is a statue of the Ringwraiths. Complete with the Eye of Sauron written above him.

We walked back through Mirabell gardens again.

I was slightly disenchanted when I noticed several rats crawling around among the plants by the wall.

Disgusting.