Salt Mines and Salzburg!!

Awesome suits!!

On Wednesday March 6, 2013 we went with the other exchange students to Salzburg to go to the Salt Mines and to explore the city for a few hours!  The bus ride was about 2 1/2 hours and we left at 7:15am.  We got to the salt mines around 10am and we had to wait until 10:45 until our tour of the salt mines.  I looked around the gift shop for a bit and noticed that this place is where they make all the salt rocks you can buy that help with allergies.  I actually have one of these rocks in my room and I believe it has helped my allergies, it is also great decoration and gives off decent lighting!

Mini Train seat

For the tour of the salt mines we had to put on these funny outfits to cover our clothing.  I believe we did this to protect them from the salt?  No one really told us why we needed to put them on, but it was fun!!  On the tour of the salt mines we all get on this huge seat that takes us down into the mines (I will show a picture!) and then we walk from there!!!  It is quite dark, but amazing at the same time.  There were 2 slides we went down that were used by the miners when they needed to go down levels while mining.  The first slide was fun, but the second slide was even better!!  We got to try some of the water that was naturally coming from the mine and it was incredibly salty.  At the end of the tour we got a cute little bottle of salt lol.

Salzburg Cathedral

After the tour we took the bus into the city of Salzburg and had 4 hours to explore the city.  We first went to find food and we discovered a Bistro that ended up being delicious.  I got a flat break type of pizza with artichokes, mushrooms, cheese and onions on it!!  We also got this beer called Radler that has a sweet taste too it, almost like sprite at the bottom of it.  After eating, we went to a castle named Hohensalzburg Castle!  On the way we saw a humongous and beautiful church, Salzburg Cathedral, and a gold ball, Stephan Balkenhol "Sphaera", with a statue on top.  It was a hike to get up to, but this castle is incredible!!  There were also amazing views from the castle of Salzburg!!  I love the architecture here in Europe, it is nothing like America.

Bistro

After the castle we went to see where Mozart lived, but he did not have much time so we just took a picture of the outside.  We had to be back on the bus at 5pm to get back to Innsbruck.  We attempted to get a beer once we were back, but we were so tired that we just went back to our dorm and passed out. We were also leaving for Vienna, Austria the next day at 7:30 am, so we all needed our sleep.




Up next, Vienna!!!