To start off, let's continue our journey in the ever so gloomy Czech Republic.
Day 14:
We woke up ridiculously early to catch a bus to Cesky Krumlov. Not only was it pouring rain, but the bus station wasn't even really in Prague, or what we thought should have counted as the borders of Prague. Point: it was far away. Bus arrived, we got on, that bus was awesome, it had free coffee and hot chocolate. Go European bus lines. We took a nice leisurely nap on the bus after drinking our free hot chocolate. It was yum. We went for a second round, but only to figure out, and by figure out I mean we were yelled at by a very angry Czech bus stewardess "not for you!!!!" Katie ran away in fear and cuddled on my shoulder for comfort. I laughed. Pleasant experience I would say. We arrive in Cesky Krumlov, and guess what? It's still raining. We get off the bus and commence our "10 minute" walk to the hostel. No no, we have our own way, or should I say Katie's own way of arriving at our hostel. Guys, let's take this ridiculously curvy, forest-y looking road to a random bridge in the middle of nowhere, cross it, find some construction and construction workers and then climb up a hill. Yes! What a great idea. As you can tell, we will now always have Katie as our beacon of direction. Lost in Cesky Krumlov, we sent Kat out to scour the area for some sense of direction. She, again, had to hop over a barrier, it wasn't her fault that it was in the way.
She oriented us in the right direction and we finally made it to our hostel. Krumlov House Hostel, my favorite one yet. They gave us an entire apartment with clean sheets, towels, and some attractive backpackers. Well, not in the apartment, but still. They also recommended a delicious little lunch special in the old town that really made us instantly love Krumlov. Look at that warm leek soup. To die for.
We were obviously exhausted from the rough yelling on the bus to the taxing meal we just ate, so we went to take a nap. Glorious! Don't judge, it was our first and only nap this entire trip. After a hibernating period, we went for some more food. Cesky Krumlov had a lot of it to offer, so we took advantage in a non-evil way. We went to the most touristy square for the coffee and dessert special. We ordered the coffee and dessert thinking it would come as the special. Again, we should probably stop thinking because it hasn't been working in our favor. We paid about $25 for 3 apple strudels and some coffee. FAIL. We tried to ask for the special price, but the woman was relentless and kept mentioning how much strudel we ate, we let it go. Good thing it was delicious or else I would have apple strudeled her face. Not literally.
We took it in good heart and instead complained about it for our half hour walk to the Krumlov castle. It helped, we were pretty happy when we arrived.
The castle is guarded by real bears, even though the only people that go in there are tourists and people who try to rip them off. I think I am going to apply that sort of security in Baltimore. Useful. We climbed up to the top of some tower and on the way found some prisoner bones and bells. Spectacular view though:
We came back down, looped around some gardens that, according to the queen of castle gardens (Katie) was apparently disappointing and decided to go for a cheap supermarket dinner. We are getting pretty good at those. We might start renting our services. If you need a cheap dinner that consists mostly of carbs, bananas and pastries, you know who to call. Tomorrow.....Salzburg, Austria and a real Sound of Music Tour, YES!
Day 15:
We get to the hostel entrance at 9 am to pick up our $30 laundry, that's right, $30 for a couple of shirts, some socks and underwear and a pair of pants or two. Whatever, moo point (hope you got the reference, if not, it's moot). We waited to be picked up by our legitimate van service to Salzburg. I say legitimate because it was booked by our hostel, it cost a lot of money, it's the only real way to get to Salzburg, and because the next few sentences will sound sketchy. We meet our driver, nice guy, who is waiting for the van to get there. The van gets there with another car and a man with long hair that hasn't been washed in a while, a full jean outfit (jacket and pants), and lots and lots of tattoos but no English whatsoever. We try to get into the van with our nice driver, but instead we take the private car with sketchy man. We drive and drive and drive. The only words that come out of his mouth in English are.... "ok." We then stop at a less than attractive car dealer and he gets out of the car and imitates stretching. Great. Now we're getting exercise lessons from our Czech driver. It rains, we eat some cookies and we keep on driving. He gets lost with his GPS and we give up and get out of the car 2 blocks, on a hill, from our destination. We walk with the smell of manure to Haus Lindner, a nice B&B in the middle of farm country on the hills of Salzburg. Mathilda, our host, was pleasant, but had cats. Allergies galore. We enter our room with a balcony looking over the singing hills. I step out onto the balcony to enjoy the mountainous view, but instead, I enjoy or I guess recoiled in horror from a different mountainous view, a naked old man. What? This is the welcome I get from Salzburg. This Sound of Music tour better be really good. We were so hungry, and all we had for lunch was a plethora of granola bars, salt with some peanuts, and broken vanilla cookies on the floor of the cat hair filled room. The Sound of Music van showed up 45 minutes late, so we happily jumped on the van and headed for the city centre. We arrived to the glorious sight of a Sound of Music bus, filled with pictures of Julie Andrews and the von Trapp family.
Our excitement....pretty intense.
We did not take this bus. Instead we got on the boring, picture-less bus. A snobby, rude woman walks by us telling us that SHE will be the first one to get on the bus, because if she doesn't get on, no one does. That was our guide and this attitude continued for four hours amongst conversations of alcohol intake with little children. Just plain awkward.
The tour was interesting. Mostly it was interesting to learn that most of the movie was actually filmed in the US. But some of the sites we found were pretty cool. There were hills, they looked like they could have been alive with music at some point, and we found the infamous 16 going on 17 gazeebo. It's closed now because an 82 year old was hopping on the benches having her husband sing to her, her hip had other plans.
The hills:
The church where the captain and Maria got married:
We also found the do, re, mi song steps:
And check out this photography genius:
Raindrops on roses and schnitzel....with potatoes? Whatever, it works.
Something unique to Salzburg...Mozart balls. Not invented by Mozart but it's chocolatey goodness.
All in all, Salzburg is beautiful, cloudy, and slightly gloomy. Next.
Train to Vienna!
Day 16:
Took a train to Vienna and once again the skies opened and the rain came down. We got soaked on the way to our hostel, dropped our bags, and decided to be adventurous abigails and walk the town. I suggested we take a bus in the pouring rain, but was shut down immediately. Scale of misery was 12 out of 10. Kat broke down and we decided to take the metro with soaking wet pants, shoes, and socks. Check out the attractiveness of those yellow pants.
We took lunch at a traditional Austrian something that started with an H. Delicious. Kat's stomach could stomach 5 large plates of food. The waitress was shocked, but the dog wasn't and it was adorable.
After lunching, we went to the only indoor attraction, the Haus Der Musik. We walked through the many interactive music exhibits and were able to create our own waltz, listen to some Mozart, and conduct the Vienna Philharmonic. Kat was the only one that failed and got yelled at by first violin guy.
More Vienna tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment