(Incidentally, at this particular stop we also spotted some men wearing lederhosen and a separate man with two adorable King Charles spaniels. The highlights...)Finally, after driving up and around bigger and bigger hills (not mountains, I guess, because there was still green stuff on the tops, not rock and snow), we reached our hotel. We could see some deer from the window of our room - they were so close! our tour guide had informed us about the grand tradition of hunting in the area. After exploring and figuring out where the 9-pin bowling alley was located in the back of the hotel (why??? For fun, I guess!), we went to dinner, which was quite good. Nobody could figure out what precisely we were eating, though. It was like beef, but very tender. Certainly not veal... Finally, we asked and...it was venison!
A thought occurred to Lori and I. Those deer we had seen out the window appeared to be inside the fence that surrounded the cow barn next to the hotel. At least we thought it was a cow barn. But we hadn't seen any cows. ...Upon further investigation we discovered that the deer had not hopped the fence to get in with the cows. There were no cows. It was the DEER who were being cooped up in the pasture. Deer...like we had eaten at dinner...
There aren't a whole lot of times that I feel I want to be a vegetarian because of the poor animals. There are many other reasons I would tend towards the more healthy eating habits of most vegetarians, but poor fluffy critters who get slaughtered and eaten isn't high on my list. However, it is quite intriguing to think about the fact that your dinner might have been in the back yard earlier that afternoon...
Despite the weirdness of that incident, the area was lovely. I took a picture of the cow across the street with the backdrop of the hills and the morning mist happening in one of the valleys. ...Oh, what I'd give to be back there for a weekend! It was, without a doubt, pastoral.
We drove down to Salzburg, the last city on of our trip, as the mist was lifting. Here we went past the cutest houses ever (we were told that this district is big on tourism, so the little villages are encouraged to participate in a "cutest village" contest by keeping pretty flowers growing in windowboxes, maintaining Alpine architecture, and other things you'd expect to see around the Austrian Alps - to meet the expectations of the tourists) and even a yarn shop (it looked great, but was too far from the main town to go back and check it out). Our day in Salzburg was overcast, but we could still look up on the big hill/cliff to see Hohensalzburg Fortress.
Salzburg is the birthplace of Mozart, so of course we saw a statue of him, which we were informed does not look like him at all.
There wasn't a whole lot of stuff to do in Salzburg that I could find, but we did get a tour where we saw some very beautiful buildings and a bell-tower that is horribly out of tune and the shopping district and Mozart's birthplace. In our free time, Lori and I visited some Christmas shops and chocolate shops (stay tuned to read about our experiment that stemmed from these visits), and we stopped by a very packed but beautiful cemetery.
By the afternoon we had seen all of the old town, and it was time to leave and head back to Munich. ...And that meant we had to say goodbye to a big group of our fellow travelers, also. Alas, our trip was ending... Good thing we still had a week in Amsterdam to look forward to!------------------------
*Disclaimer: I have actually been working on this post since October 2, but Blogger seems to like to kick me off or get mad whenever I try to add photos to this post, so...the delay isn't totally my fault! It really shouldn't have been that long!
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