The Hills are Alive

We made the mistake of breaking down our camp and actually trying to park in a large European city. We don't want to do that again. The girls went on foot to explore Salzburg and I managed to find a parking spot. There is some question to how legal it was but we escaped without a parking ticket. Salzburg is nicely situated with rugged mountains visible from town and a castle overlooking the city. The photos don't do it justice, but the river is a nice turquoise color from the glacial runoff.






It is also the birthplace of Mozart, whose ghost now haunts tourists, scaring them out of their parents' hard-earned coins.






We had a few hours to kill so it seemed like the proper Salzburg thing to do would be to grab coffee and cakes at a plaza-side cafe. The cakes were great and the coffee strong. Exactly what we expected.





We made it back to Dagobert and headed for the hills. Only a few km outside of Salzburg you enter the most beautiful countryside. We had primed the kids for Europe by watching Heidi and The Sound of Music and the countryside looks just like the movies. Dark green meadows blanketing steep hills with little alpine farmhouses clinging to the sides. Austria is very clean and tidy. The bad neighbor here is the guy who didn't plant overflowing flower baskets under the windowsills of his chalet.





We are camping in Hallstatt, a beautiful village crowded onto the shore of a turquoise lake. The valley is like a limestone Yosemite, with towering walls rising right above the campsite. This morning it's raining but we are planning on splurging a little and taking a tour of the salt mine above the city.




I have to mention this Apple iPad that we brought along. It is one device that does everything we need in a compact package. We download all the pictures onto it, it plays music and movies, connects to internet and email of course, holds all of our guidebooks and novels, and it's a GPS too with a database of campsites. The turn-by-turn instructions are a lifesaver and when we do get lost it's usually because we weren't listening closely enough. The only problem is that we only have one iPad and everyone wants to use it!