Europe Trip #13: Salzburg - 2 - The Old Town

Salzburg is known for two main things:

- Birthplace of Mozart [the airport is named after him]
- The Sound of Music movie/ musical

Rather than do a Sound of Music tour [I could think of much worse to do], I kept in the old part of the town and did some more exploring. Here are some more pictures from my wanderings, including a photo of Mozart :-) The final photo includes the Hohensalzburg Fortress which I´ll cover in the next post.

Europe Trip #12: Salzburg - 1 - The Old Town

After being in Bled for close on a week, we jumped on a train and went to Salzburg, Austria, for 2 nights. Due to timings, we only had 1 full day there, so I didn´t get to look around anywhere near as much as I would have liked to.

I did however make a point of spending time in the old part of town. Now in European terms, old doesn´t mean built in the 1930´s or anything :-) - some of this place would be over 1000 years old.

Like any old places, there where quite a few narrow lanes [much like some of those pokey little towns in England], but it also includes large open spaces, particularly in the middle of the old town, near the Cathedral.

More on the Cathedral and the Castle later; here are some pictures of the old part of Salzburg.

Europe Trip #11: Slovenia/ Bled - 6 - Last comments from Bled

A couple of final comments from/ about Bled.

Highly recommended? Yes! Not sure about winter [sometimes the lake freezes over, so it gets darn cold!!!]. Mid September was perfect - the weather was great and all the school kids were gone.

The locals were friendly [a lot of them spoke good english] and helpful, and the prices seemed reasonable.

Last comment - take a look at the picture. Think this will work in NZ?? ha ha ha!

Europe Trip #10: Slovenia/ Bled - 5 - River Tubing

On our last full day in Bled [and the day after the wedding], a large group of us when river tubing. For the initiated, this involves coasting 8 or so kms down a river on old tracker tire tubes. Awesome fun!

The trip was professionally led, and after getting on the wetsuits, wetsuit shoe thingies [that´s a technical term I think], jackets, life jackets and helmets, followed by a brief [but very sufficient] safety briefing [including the very important demonstration of how to lift your bum up if you´re approach rocks!!! :-)], we put the tubes in the river and set off.

It was a bit wet to be taking my camera, so no photos from the water. The river was gentle enough for us novices, but rough enough to make it exciting and keep us awake. I almost disappeared from view once [I went right beside a big rock and the water dropped down about 1/2 a meter afterwards], only to look up and see one of the guides laughing his head off - I must have had a decent expression on my face :-)

Just over half way down the river we stopped at a bridge where most of us did the 5 meter jump in to the river. Now that was awesome, although it all goes on slo-mo when you jump... We saw a couple of great face-plants [thankfully not me!] :-)

After the trip, we all warmed up with some blueberry schnapps [yum yum YUM!], then headed off to the BBQ [The Slovenes take their meat seriously - an awesome feed!] while the second group did their river trip.

All in all, a great day out and another highly recommended event in Bled!

Pictures are of us suiting up and at the BBQ. I have no pictures of me dropping off the bridge, so don´t ask :-)

Europe Trip #9: Slovenia/ Bled - 4 - The Gorge

When checking in to our lodge [there were up to 8 of us staying there] in Bled, one of the highly recommended attractions was the Gorje [or the Gorge in English - I know, that one was not difficult to translate!!!]. The gorge is a 1.6 km walk about 15 minutes drive out of Bled [it took us about 30-40 minutes thanks to our navigator... ha ha].

As it´s name suggests, it is a walk in a gorge. Pretty much the entire track is attached to the very steep sided cliff face and there are several bridges across the river as you travel along it. It must have been very difficult, and dangerous, to build all those years ago! However, one of the really nice things is that it is an easy walk with not too many steps, although the track is very narrow most of the time.

As you´ll see in the photos it´s a very scenic location, and I´d certainly recommend it for anyone heading up to Bled. For the more adventurous, there´s a walking track that leads right back to Bled - a 1.5 hour walk from memory [no, I was not that adventurous!]. I won´t say anything more - time to let the pictures do the talking!

Europe Trip #8: Slovenia/ Bled - 3 - Bled Island

In the middle of the lake at Bled is an Island with a fairly impressive history. The earliest buildings [not the current ones] trace back to approximately the 8th century BC. The current buildings on the site are a Catholic church and associated buildings [church, accommodation etc]. The church does not appear to be in use for more than a tourist attraction now, although it is a pretty impressive attraction.

Access to the island is via boat [either row your own, or my preference, EUR$13 for a return trip out, rowed in style and comfort!!].

This island was also used for some of the wedding pictures - apparently, the day prior to my sister´s wedding, there were up to eight brides [etc] on the island at one time. I wouldn´t want to have had to keep that lot separated!!! :-)

The following pictures include the transport, the island, buildings and view from the island. Another must do for Bled [in addition to the scenic walk around the lake - about 1.5 - 2 hours].

Europe Trip #7: Slovenia/ Bled - 2 - Bled Castle

One of the main features of Bled is the local castle. It is nowhere near as big as some others in Europe [including one I hope to visit in Salzburg, Austria in a couple of days], but still an impressive sight standing up on the edge of a large rock face.

The wedding was held here, and it was a very nice place to hold a wedding. Inside the castle, it is part museum, part working castle [even if only for the benefit of us tourists, still including a winery and a working replica of the Guttenburg press].

Anyway, here are the pictures. Wish you were here yet?? :-) Take a good look at the night shot of the castle. This shows the face in the rock fairly clearly.

Europe Trip #6: Slovenia/ Bled - 1

After a night in London it was off to Slovenia for a few nights. The main reason for this was my sister getting married to a nice Australian chap [Hello Rochelle and Sam]. After arriving in Bled [about a 30 minute drive from the airport], we settled into our accommodation then got about looking at the local environment.

To say that this place is amazing would be to grossly underrate it! You'll only see a glimpse of the place in this blog, and if you are going to Europe, this should go on to the must visit list.

Bled itself is situated by a lake and the background consists mainly of mountains. The lake was very warm [some other tourists said it was much warmer than their hotel swimming pool!]. In the middle of the lake is an island with an old church on it [more on this is a following post]. In this first post however, I´ve just included a few pictures of the general area, as below. Some of these were taken from the lakefront, others from up on the Bled Castle [again, more in a later post].

Here are a few photos of the area, including the lake, the township [from up on Bled Castle] and a couple of photos of an old church [on the mainlnd, not the one on the island].

Europe Trip #5: Cornwall/ Padstow again

I´m still not sure how many times you can walk around a small town like Padstow, but thankfully it was soon time to move on, else I sure that some others would have happily examined every nook and cranny for the next week or two!

Perhaps the most exciting thing we did [apart from the Eden Project visit] was take a quick jetboat ride around the harbour area to get a different look at things, and at just 5 pounds each, it was actually good value for money!

One quite funny thing that happened was a certain somebody [no, not me!] putting a bottle of rosé in the freezer so that it would cool down quicker... then forgot about it - you can see the result below :-)

Following Padstow, we went up to London and stayed the night there. We were in the ¨London House Hotel¨. Small, but reasonably comfortable, the thing that amused me most was the sign on the door warning of consequences should I nick off with anything from the room [I wouldn´t, and anyway, it was so sparse that there was not much to nick anyway!]. Click on the image to get a readable version, and when reading the notice, remember that you are in England - the home of the English language :-) Unfortunately with onjly one night in London I was not able to get about exploring the place, but there will be time for that later on in this trip.

Next posts will be about our stay in lovely Bled in Slovenia so stay tuned!