Salzburg Castle

The Salzburg Castle is HUGE, one of the biggest castle's I've visited in Europe.  With COVID rules still in play, we had to reserve tickets to visit the castle.  We got the earliest time we could & found that we were awake before the rest of the city.  It was amazing.  It was almost as if the city was ours & ours alone to explore.

This beautiful graveyard is situated just below the castle.  This is the graveyard they used to design the graveyard at the end of the Sound of Music movie.  They took several pictures & rebuilt it on a soundstage in Los Angeles.  It's really beautiful.

Trek & I managed to find the oldest bakery in Austria while exploring at 7 in the morning.  This bakery is over 800 years old & still uses the same wood burning oven it did 800 years ago.  They make the most delicious sweet rolls I've ever eaten in my life.  It's a MUST SEE if you go to Salzburg.  The rolls were fresh from the oven at 7am.

Of course all the kids wanted to do was play chess under the big gold ball.  I swear we played chess here 6-7 times in our two days in Salzburg.  They LOVED it.  It makes me want to get a giant outdoor chess set.

They too loved the rolls so much that we had to go BACK to the bakery & buy more.

While we waited for our castle time we just explored the city a little more.  It was fun finding more beautiful buildings & some interesting statues.

Finally at 8am, we got in the tram up to the castle & made our way to the top.

The history of this castle is pretty amazing.  It still looks like it did in the 1600's which is rare for castles this size.  Usually they've been rebuilt several times by then or expanded, but this one is still original.

Being on top of the castle made for some GORGEOUS views of the Alps.

This room was really interesting.  They had horns all around the room & different "songs" would play in from the room at the end almost like a music box works, but the sound would be pushed through these horns.  It was used almost as a clock to let castle staff & patrons know important events of the day like dining times, wake up & bed times.

The castle had an interactive area where you could play video games, take pictures of yourself, do mazes, & more.  The kids especially loved this area.

The state rooms were gorgeous.  They were the only ornate rooms left in the castle, but they were really cool to see.

The kids have been saving up their allowance money for some time now & they couldn't wait to get some Salzburg souvenirs.  Craiger got a goat? (don't ask because I don't know). And Bladen & Canyon got swords & shields.

After several hours exploring, we headed back down to the city center.

And found the biggest pretzels I've ever seen in my life.  They had cheese pretzels, bacon pretzels, chocolate pretzels, salted pretzels, & more.  The kids were in heaven.

On our way back to our car, we found the cutest little "oom-pa-pa band" playing in the streets.  Trek & I danced a little bit while the kids laughed at us, but it was fun.

Goodbye Salzburg City.  We're off to the salt mines.