Salzburg

Salzburg looks very much like the rest of Austria, although the locals have worked hard to separate the beautiful but twee Altstadt (Old Town) from the place where the rest of Salzburg lives and works. Having staying in Hall 18 months ago, I prefer the genuine feel of an old town that hasn't been made over purely for tourists. That said, there's some lovely little shops and some great architecture.

There's also a lot of Americans.

We wandered around the Altstadt for some time, explored some out-of-the-way stores and had a nice lunch before tackling the fortress, Festung Hohensalzburg.

It's a cheap diversion, only 7 euros which includes only a one-way ticket for the funicular. As usual, we chose the challenging option, and walk up the series of steeply graded switchbacks to reach the entrance to the festung. The guard was particularly disgusted when we counted out several Euros of small change, tut-tutting his way through the labourious process of re-counting the change we'd just counted in front of him. In revenge, he gave us about 9 X 10-Euro notes, which we were very grateful for.

The festung itself is fascinating, built layer upon layer for around 1000 years and was never taken in battle. It was surrendered without a fight to Napoleon. The tour itself is a little short, and in true Germanic fashion we were carefully 'managed' as a group through the various rooms for maximum efficiency, unlike Hampton Court, in which you are free to wander in your own time.

The view from the fortress is simply stunning and easily worth the price of admission. I'll post photos soon, but they're on Peter's camera as I didn't feel like carrying the bulk of my FZ20.

Unsurprisingly, we had the funicular virtually to ourselves on the way back down the mountain side!