A Castle to Myself

Salzburg appears to have an economy based 90 percent on Mozart and, I assume to a lesser degree, the Sound of Music.  I've only been here a few hours, but that's the vibe.

This is not a bad thing, as Mozart at least doesn't seem likely to stop being a draw anytime soon.  And the town is postcard pretty, with a small old town crawling with beautiful buildings and quaint shopping streets, a fortress watching overhead, and streets ending abruptly in cliff walls.

Today I mainly got myself oriented, and walking the town isn't terribly hard.  Given my love of history, and military history specifically, top of the list to see was Hohensalzburg Fortress (photo from National Geographic at right).  There is a funicular that takes one to the top, but I like to rough it, so my bright idea was to see how high I could climb to try to find a decent view to have a picnic, even though it was too late in the day for the fort to be open.

Unlike many of my bright ideas, this one turned out to actually have some wattage.  The ascent was about 500 feet all told, but strangely enough, although the rooms of the fortress were closed for the day, the grounds were wide open.  I ended up having some yogurt with fruit and meusli (Let me just say, I love this stuff, but I never think to buy it back home.  This is going to be an easy New Year's resolution to keep), fruit and cheese with a view of the town next to one of the cannons set up to ward off the Turkish assault that never materialized.  This qualifies as a highlight of the trip already.