I didn’t think I would post today, as we traveled on three trains starting at 8:30 AM to arrive in Salzburg after 3, but it turns out that the city was eager to share its delights, even for late-afternoon arrivals.
John Bateman met us at the station, after coming in for the week from Portugal. We’re also celebrating our birthdays. He turns 80!
John returns to Salzburg after a 50-year hiatus!
Together, we took a taxi to our hotel at Goldgasse 17, literally steps away from the gigantic Domplatz square. We barely had to walk out the door to see all this in the first few minutes of our visit:
Goldgasse, looking from our hotel onto the Domplatz
A horse-drawn carriage in the square
Towering fountain in the square
The Dom cathedral
Old meets new, with the Abbey Church of St Peter in the background
The medieval Hohensalzburg fortress dominates the skyline
Triton fountain
And a few photos from inside St Peter’s, where designers were definitely going for Baroque:
When the sun began to set, we stopped for dinner, and then for our first Austrian Pastry of the Day, made fresh here in a tiny shop in the same building where Mozart taught one of his students, composer and pianist Fran’s Jakob Freystadtler (as you can see on the plaque above the door).
The pastry is a traditional German baumkuchen, which is a sweet dough, rolled onto a wooden spit, then rolled in cinnamon sugar and baked like a rotisserie chicken in a small oven.
When you eat it warm, it unravels like string cheese, but the Germans think it looks like a log or tree with rings, thus its name, tree-cake.
Regardless of its name and my odd food comparisons, it made a sweet end of the day for the three of us who shared it. Gut nacht for now.
