Europe 2018: On to Austria!

We woke up at 5am to shower and walked to the airport (our hotel location was awesome, and the rooms were good, just don't eat at the restaurant, according to my sisters 😬). Dad got to sleep in a little for his flight back to the USA. Lucky butt.

Our flight was from Gatwick to Munich, where we would pick up our rental car and drive to Salzburg! We were so tired, but not tired enough to be so, so happy to be together and with so much ahead of us! 💜

 There are a handful of English words that I LOVE and that are only really used in England. Toastie is one of them. Ice lolly, dodgy, and crisps are a few others. So much better than their American English counterparts.

Landed in Munich!

There was a looong line for passport control here, but we made it through and soon were driving out of the airport in our rental car. A Jeep... (#feelingsoGerman?).

We're ten years old and giggled at ausfahrt and gute fahrt every time we saw them.

Out on the open German highway! So green!

We eventually stopped for lunch at a McDonald's (where we also saw what could only be described as a lawn-mowing-Roomba trimming the grass and it was the funniest/cutest thing I've ever seen) and ended up taking off onto a side road to find a place to pull over and eat. And it went... into Loiderding!

Heaven on earth. The cutest little German town, if you could even call it that! It was more like five or six houses at an intersection of one-lane roads, then a space of about a half mile of forest and rolling green hills, and then another tiny cluster of homes, on and on and on. Pure country beauty! We spent awhile driving along and taking turns choosing to go right or left. It was unforgettable.

An hour later we were in SALZBURG, where we met our hosts, Lee Ann and Herbert (pronounced "Hair-Bear", as you're reading this, if you want to be saying it right [:). Our hosts were just the best! Lee Ann was friends with my grandma when they were in college. Her and her husband are the sweetest. Once we put our bags into our rooms and talked for awhile, we weren't sure what to do for the rest of our day. Herbert solved that problem by taking us on a little whirlwind tour of the city before we went back out to dinner.

 

The Siegmundstor Tunnel! It goes through Monchsburg Mountain, a big hill that sits near the middle of the city. We didn't drive through it but what we saw was extremely cool. Built in the 1700s!

 Next we parked near Schloss Leopoldskron and walked along the lake. It's a gorgeous rococo mansion that was used in a few scenes of the Sound of Music (a lot of these things will be but Ryan refused to go on any sort of Sound of Music tour with me because he "got his fill of it" when he lived in Europe. #snob).

 We had a fantastic view of the Festung Hohensalzburg, the incredible medieval castle that overlooks the city, from our parking spot.

Pink building? Yes please!

Admiring the Hohensalzburg again.

I just like this picture because of the colorful road signs and the biking family. :] And I remember standing here for awhile and taking it all in - We were in SALZBURG! Austria!!!! So old, so green, so beautiful.

Next was Schloss Hellbrun!

It was SUPER cool how you approached the mansion from far off, following a gravel road right up to it. The walls and home were all the same color of warm golden yellow that I fell in love with, especially with the Tuscan green-blue shutters. Drooling.

All the colors in this view. 😍

Behold, the one and only glass pavilion! Man, I just love this movie. [: The scene was filmed back at Leopoldskron (where we were earlier along the lake) but after filming was completed it was given to the city of Salzburg as a gift. Eventually they restored it and moved it to Hellbrun. It was neat to see it! And I had "Sixteen Going On Seventeen" stuck in my head for the rest of the day.💃💕