Thursday in Salzburg

Thursday in Salzburg
At this moment it is Friday morning. It is still raining. I was so counting on sun today. We will pack up and leave our bags at the front desk and wander through the cold rainy streets until it is time to get our train. I am actually more than ready to come home. The weather looks cold at home but there will be sun and no bells.
Yesterday we put on our warmest clothes, gathered up our umbrella, and headed back to finish the rick Steve’s walking tour. We walked down the cool old street with all the old or at least old looking signs. There was a McDonalds with a cute little ancient looking sign and no arches. We had a bowl of soup at the Mozart Café. This was just what we needed.
Then, we headed back towards the funicular. Since we have Salzburg cards we can ride it as much as we like even though it is kind of pricy. They were playing live brass band music in the square. There will be a six day festival. It was not raining at this very moment so we sat down at a picnic bench and listened to a few songs. I like this music. It makes me think of my dad and grandmother doing polkas in our basement.
Then we went up to the fortress and walked around. It is at the very top of the hill and you can see it from every where in the city.
We headed back for our afternoon nap. At about 4:00 we wandered out in search of food. I wanted those apricot pancakes again. We found them and met some odd people. On one side of us there was a woman traveling alone who seemed to be able to speak any language to anyone. On the other side was an older man who told us how hard it was to get the Grappa he really wanted. He said they always wanted to give him the other brand. He was Swiss and said he no longer liked to travel to the US because immigration asked him too many questions about Swiss bank accounts. Then we met an old lady who said she used to live in Boston and hates Salzburg. I think the rain was bringing out the weird people including us.
We went back to the room and red for a while. This was concert night for us and the concert was in the fortress. We were going to have to go up several long flights of stairs and I was getting a bit worried about this. We went to the restaurant at the fortress and had our last Salzburg dinner. It was delicious but I did not have any wine. I had those steps to look forward to.
We finally ventured up and it was not that bad. The space that held the concert was lovely and the views would have been stunning if the clouds were not in the way. The music transported me to a sunny mountain top. There were two American couples behind us. One of them had just picked up their Mercedes. They were driving it around Europe and then having it shipped to Canada where they lived. They were going to drive it into Vienna. The other couple started laughing because Vienna would be pretty tough to drive in and there is no parking.
We stopped in the little bar that is part of our hotel, at least sort of part of our hotel. We went there last night as well. It is called Coffee and Boos for the Working Class. This seems like a funny name to me. Our friendly bar tender would not let us pay for our drinks.
Then it was too bed and sleep before the bells started in the morning. Actually there is some kind of street cleaning machine that comes by around 5:30 to make sure you are awake for the bells.
This turned out to be almost a 7 mile walking day and a lot of it was up steps.