Scooter bikes and the Best of Mozart

 9/26: Quinn started the day with a workout in our place, while Simone, Bob, and I went on a walk/run around Salzburg. 

Home for schoolwork, and then an afternoon surprise that Bob arranged. He found an Airbnb experience with a guide that provided scooter bikes to explore the city. Our guide, Dagmata, provided such a unique and entertaining experience to explore a city!

Dagmata giving us some fun Salzburg facts in front of another Sound of Music filming site. We've started watching the film again; just like we did with Harry Potter, it's SO fun to see all the places from the film in person!

We swung by our place to do an outfit change before the Mozart concert tonight. Another gorgeous evening!

Mozart's birthplace

We took the funicular up to the fortress to explore it prior to the concert.

Beautiful views from up top!

The Best of Mozart Concert at the Fortress Hohensalzburg. The eight musicians were so talented and absolutely incredible. It was fun to attend two live classical musical performances in one week; they were both so different and so impressive!

A short walk home in the rain finished the evening for us on Friday eve. Another fantastic day of events carefully planned by our master guide, Dad/Bob!

Pretzels = a food group

 9/25: It was lovely to wake up at a normal time (0630), pack up our few items, and stroll to our gate. We arrived to beautiful weather in Salzburg about noon, and took a bus to our new Airbnb that was fortunately ready for us earlier than it was promised.

Salzburg!

We got acquainted with our new place, helped the kids start some schoolwork, and walked down the block to the local grocery to pick up our standard items. We found pretzel rolls, pretzel buns, large soft pretzels...omg. After growing up with us Kuelthaus eating pretzels daily, there is absolutely no way I could adhere to my gluten reduced plan here! Bob and I have decided to fully embrace all things pretzel while we're here!

We fixed a late lunch of ham and cheese sandwiches on the most delicious pretzel rolls, and then walked out our door to explore a bit of Salzburg.

We love the light, fresh colors of the buildings. Everything seems so clean and well kept.

Entrance to Mirabell Gardens - the steps where Julie Andrews sang Do Re Mi

The fortress in the background

Charcot loves the gardens too!

More Sound of Music places!

Gorgeous flowers in the gardens

The entrance to the Troll Garden

Bob’s favorite beer garden - the Augustiner brewery

The pretzels were SO good! We tried to order 2 for us to share, but she said the basket has 3 in it - but we’re only charged for what we eat (would they really re-serve them if we didn’t?). Not to worry - no chance we were leaving any behind in the basket!

We also enjoyed some sausage, sauerkraut, and Wiener schnitzel (we all loved!) before heading home. What a great start to Salzburg!

The fortress on the hill is incredible!

Smallest hotel room ever

 9/23: The kids enjoyed their last swim in the local Richmond pool, and Bob and I walked to the Sander's place to grab a few items we had sent to them and return their French press that we had borrowed. We enjoyed our last night at our Richmond place, and started packing up to leave for Salzburg tomorrow. We enjoyed Richmond and the London area more and more as we spent more time here. We loved walking to the pool and to the nearby parks and shops. The public transport is super cool and we love how easy it is to get around. Our Airbnb here has been fine, but we are ready to leave - it is very close to Heathrow, the Richmond train station, and one of the grocery stores, so the combined noise in the middle of the night has been challenging for our sleeping.

Last breakfast in our Richmond place

9/24: After schoolwork in the morning, we had an early lunch and left for the Gatwick Airport at noon (the latest we could check out of our place). Our flight to Salzburg was the next day at 0840, so in order to not leave our Richmond place super early, we decided to spend the night at the Gatwick Airport Hotel (Bloc). It was a new experience for all of us! We took the train from Richmond to Clapham Junction (huge train station) and transferred to another train that took us to Gatwick Airport. It was really nice to not feel like we were in a hurry, and we were very thankful to not be making that trip at 0500 the next morning!

We settled into an airport coffee shop to allow the kids to do schoolwork, though connecting to the airport WiFi was problematic. We managed to get a few things done, enjoyed our dinner, and settled into our itty bitty room. The hotel's slogan is "eat, sleep, fly" which is exactly what we did!

Me standing at the hallway door. Just the essentials - beds and a bathroom! Fortunately we were able to check our bags before we went to dinner, otherwise we would not have been able to move in the room!

We all snuggled in our bed and watched part of a WWII documentary.

National Gallery and Harrods

 9/22: Quinn needed to finish some schoolwork, and didn't mind if the three of us went to see the National Gallery without him. We made a stop at the Fischer's hotel to drop off a small box of items they agreed to take back to Wisconsin for us. So nice of them! It is best to keep traveling light and not struggling each time we open/close our luggage!

A couple of our favorites:

Artsy pic of Simone and me

Front seat on the top of the double decker

Simone insisted on this one! We got a shake at Five Guys.

Harrods - wow. We knew it was high end shopping but didn’t quite realize *just* how high end!

100K for the bottle on the right

130K

It was interesting to see, but not being a shopper, and having already toured a bit at the gallery, I was not in the mood to linger too long. The food hall was super impressive, and the whole mall was jammed with people. We did wonder if any “normal” people come in there - good people watching! I can’t imagine the client stories the staff have…and I wonder how crazy that place is before Christmas!

We came home to join Quinn for the Packer game. We enjoyed the necessary cheese and crackers, and some interesting chips we found at the grocery:

We thought we'd try this unique flavor of 'sausage sandwich with ketchup'.

This is the back of the package - we laughed so hard! I'm sure the vegetarians will be picking up the bag of sausage sandwich flavor chips to see if they can eat them!