Trip: Austria - Day 3 Linz, Day 4 Salzburg

Day 3: Linz

We had some issue with our train tickets because of the heavy rains the previous week. The service agent I had to talk to in Vienna just... had me at my wits' ends. I don't recall exactly what it was though (good thing I forget about the bad things LOL), but it was like, because I bought the sparscheine ticket, it was only valid for that one particular train. But due to the cancellations, my ticket got turned into a "super"-ticket and was good for any train on that day. So I went to ask what I had to do, and the service agent just said, "it's valid for the day." "But WHAT do I have to do?" "You don't have to do anything! It's valid!" "But what does it mean? Do I need a paper that says my ticket is valid? So I can hop on any other train today? WHAT does it mean?" ugh. That was a conversation.

Once we reached Linz, we first headed to our hotel to drop off our bags. This was a weird hotel LOL. It's under renovation, I guess renovating to make it all cute. It's fine. But. The areas being renovated are not closed off, so we had to walk through a renovating corridor, wtf? And our room too, the... Trunking? Cladding? was still all open (where they drill a recess into the wall for the cabling/pipes/whatever).

My friend was the one and only Asian I saw on that day in Linz, haha!

After asking at the tourist info point, we got up the Postlingberg and had a quick bite with excellent views!

And very soon a bee came flying about our seat and we had to wave it off.

I wasn't exactly sure what the Grottenbahn was, I only knew it was some sort of train ride?

So we go look.

So it's a fairy tale train thingamajig.

The train made 3 round around that tunnel. First round the lights on the left wall was on, second round the lights on the right wall was on, and the last round all the lights went on.

After the train ride, we had to go down into a huge room, with small rooms that had displays of fairy tales.

Some fairy tales I sort of knew about, some I outright knew that Disney has "prettified" them... but there were also some weird fairy tales that just made me go WTF.

I know German fairy tales are usually dark but HEY! WHAT IS THE PRINCE DOING MARRYING THE TWO SISTERS???????????????????????? (I have never heard of this Snow-white and Rose-red)

We then just walked around a bit the Postlingberg. Going up, the train track was still under maintenance, so we were lucky by the time we left that the train track to fixed. The other weird thing is, there's no staff there, so who nobody really knew when the train would have come.

Back down in the Hauptplatz, we walked around and visited a few places I had marked.

We first saw this pedestrian green light but didn't notice, but apparently, there's quite a few LGBT(whatever else) pedestrian lights around.

Dinner location. Food wasn't bad.

We started to actually look at the traffic lights LOL

Day 4: Linz > Salzburg

I forgot to shoot a photo, but while the hotel itself was in a weird state due to the renovations, the hotel served EXCELLENT breakfast. I loved it. Thinking about it and I'm hungry again. After breakfast, we decided to explore a little more of the city, since our 24-hour card was still valid. But then we took a wrong turn and sort of got lost, then we had to rush back to the hotel to get our bags and onwards to our train towards Salzburg!

Once again, I booked a hotel right next to the train station, so it was just dropping them off, then off we went to hunt for lunch.

Found this place "Baerenwirt" where the internets say they serve great fried chicken, and wowzers they served GREAT FRIED CHICKEN. It was delivious!

OMG I want to eat that chicken again.

Christmas shops!

We got to Salzburg old town and since I've been here already and know more or less, I decided to skip this, while my friend went in to see.

So I just meandered around. I bought a St Christopher keychain, I remembered I did not have any St Christopher thing in my new car, so figured I might as well get that. (There's a follow up story to this key chain later back in Macau)

Had to hide in churches and shops as it was still drizzly.

Made our way back to the hotel as we had to get changed.

We virtually bought every brand of Mozartkugel that we saw (except for Mirabel)

We had an Opera Dinner at St Peter Stiftskulinarium. Food was okay. It's really more of a gimmick anyway.

Weird decor in this part of the restaurant.

What did I say, we were looking!

Trip: Austria - Day 5 Hallstatt, Day 6 Salzburg

Day 5: Hallstatt & Dachstein

Ah, one of the most looked forward-to day! It was a super early morning. We woke up at 5am to take the bus over to Hallstatt, which involved a couple of bus changes. What we were mystified about was, there were actually a couple of tourists getting on the bus at weird middle-of-nowhere bus stops. Also kids going to school. Anyway, after we reached Hallstatt, we went further to Dachstein Obertraun (sp?). Giant Ice Caves, Mammoth Caves, and what was supposed to be the Five-Fingers lookout, which didn't happen for us because of bad weather. (Look at the top photo of the ticket). I wanted to go to THAT!.

So the lady at the ticket counter for the cable car already said the weather was expected to be bad all day. So we only got tickets up to the first cable car stop (Five Fingers Lookout is at second cable car stop). As we walked up the mountain, we thought maybe the sky would clear up later in the day.

It was a long-long way up.

The ice caves were interesting.

Fake bear had some story thing going on.

These are all nice and dandy now, but I wonder back then when it was just found out, without all these lighting, what would this have looked like?

Lastly we went over a bridge where they played the intro part of the Phantom Of The Opera (what the heck?). There was a family of... maybe Thai or Vietnamese, they kept wanting to stay in the front. Which is actually fine. But they wanted to stay in the front, but one of the guy wanted to make a video of the family, so he stepped back, blocking the way for everyone behind, my friend and I got a little miffed and just walked over him and he had to come running and try to squeeze back with his family. Geez. Read the room.

When we came out, it was actually drizzling. So it was fated that, I wasn't going to the Five Fingers on this day.

Well, there may be no Five Fingers, but we made our own Ten Fingers LOL. We decided to skip the Mammoth cave and go back to Hallstatt.

It's nice and quaint, and it's charming, but I don't get all the hype about it in social media.

We went up the other mountain in Hallstatt to get to the Salt Mines.

The sky cleared up! We should have stayed up! But then we would have not have enough time for the Salt Mines.

Had to get dressed up for that.

Darkness and darkness and salt and whatnot.

There was some other light-works show here, which again, pretty interesting. We also got to slide down the mine slide twice. I took videos, so no photos.

So this staircase is.... so very old and was just found in recent years. They wanted to send it to some lab, but on the way they found out it was decaying out of the atmosphere in the salt mines, so they sent this back. It was the salt and dryness in these caves that helped keep the stairs in such good condition.

We got to sit on the choo-choo-mine-train to leave LOL. Again, a video, so no photos.

Baa baa black sheep.....

The fog was coming back!

Back down we started to explore the town properly.

Yes, very charming and pretty. But I still don't see spending 3 days here (as many of my friends and my travel partner's friends keep saying)

It was a pretty long walk to the ferry pier.

Kitty cat!

We managed to get on the last ferry across the lake, to the train station and took the train back to Salzburg. There was a bit of a wait mid-way as some connection was running late. I think in the end we just had dinner at a kebab place next to the hotel, which was actually surprisingly good.

Day 6: Salzburg

Ah, it was such a beautiful day on this day. Had I known it, I would have put THIS day for Hallstatt! But hindsight is 20/20.

We went to one... palace or museum or stateroom or something.... anyway, what we noticed was, there was virtually NOBODY in there. In our experience in Germany, Czech, Spain, when we visited these palace rooms type of place, they are always packed with people and we were essentially just walking one behind another and being led the way. Not trying to diss here in Austria, but it was very refreshing and we got to properly see the rooms.

And the place was essentially endless... we kept walking and walking and it was never ending. Then we walked through a chapel or church, and there was organ music going on. Not sure who watches Anime here, but the "standard" Anime-school-ding-ding bells? Yes, that! Here, I found a youtube LOL. We stood around to listen to the whole piece. We were actually next to the chapel, so we weren't in the chapel (paid area) but in a state room that had a gallery that was next to the chapel.

Watch on YouTube

We went up the mountain.

Just my daily job of bull wrangling.

Realllllyyyyyy beautiful day!

Cemetery.

Cute!

We got a 2-day city pass thing, so we were trying to squeeze as many paid visits as possible.

I think we had like only 10 minutes to make a quick tour in this museum.

Then we walked around until dark.

I think on this day we ended the day at an Asian restaurant. We needed a break from the heavy schnitzel and stews. We had quite some fun. The order-taker (boss?) of the restaurant was probably Malaysian. He spoke German to the locals, English to the tourists, Mandarin to some tourists, and then he heard my friend and I discussing what to order in Cantonese, so he spoke to us in Cantonese. The staff (mandarin speakers) were amazed that I spoke mandarn too.