Pat here:
That's me on a fake penny farthing--a vehicle that plays a part in my March release, Lessons in Enchantment. I couldn't resist the photo op. I don't know how anyone climbed on one of those things unless it was stuck to the ground like this one!
In my last blog , I described the first few days of my Viking tour of the Danube and lamented that I didn’t have room to get into the really magical stuff. My memory isn’t of the best, but I’m hoping if I dig around in our tons of photos that I may be able to piece together the rest of the journey.
The tour was almost two weeks, so I can only touch on my favorite highlights. I believe we left off in Munich and just flashed a few photos from other places down the river. I think Salzburg is the city you’d like to hear about next. It was one of my favorites anyway. It’s a truly ancient city, 
having been established before 696. I’ll let you read the fascinating history . The salt mines put it smack on a major trade route since salt was the main means for preserving foods back then, and they couldn’t run down to the local grocery to pick up a box.
We stayed in Salzburg’s medieval old town—which means there are no major highways for cars and buses. One has to have special permission just to bring a vehicle into the area. One side of our hotel was on the outskirts, so the bus could unload on the highway running along the river. The hotel was built on the river about 1377. I think it was part of a monastery at that point. It was also a brewery in another century and renovated into a hotel in the 1990s. The rooms were a hodgepodge with wonderful ancient oak beams in the ceilings.
When we walked out the front door, we were in the pedestrian lanes of the old town. One of the charming Christmas stores was right outside the door. The Christmas Market is a huge deal 
here, but we were a month early. We were fine with that. We ate in medieval restaurants, enjoyed a fabulous Mozart concert complete with costumed musicians and a medieval menu in a monastery that is billed as the oldest operating restaurant in Europe, and explored open air markets. There were high end stores too, but we can find them anywhere. Instead, we visited the gardens across from Mozart’s apartments in the “new town,” which would have been upscale from the tiny flat he lived in as a child in “old town.” The town squares were filled with street musicians, and mouth-watering bakeries were tucked down every alley.
The tour took us around the Sound of Music sets used in the movie. The exteriors in the movie weren’t always the ones that matched the interiors, but the nunneries and garden and mountains are all there, along with the Von Trapps’ modest home and the gazebo. Amusingly, the mountain they’re seen climbing at the end would have taken them into Germany.
We covered a lot of ground from Salzburg to Cesky Krumlov, but I’m in danger of running out of space already, and I really wanted to mention the Czech Republic. Cesky Krumlov has a fabulous sprawling castle which was first started in the 1200s and had been built onto for 
centuries afterward. The town was never large, but Czechoslovakia fell behind the Iron Curtain and the spectacular history was nearly lost, as happened in many other of the historic cities in what is now the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Our tour guide told us horror stories of that period and showed us the ugly architecture that replaced many of the beautiful old buildings. But after the “Velvet Revolution” in 1989, the town slowly recuperated. The blackened deteriorating walls of the castle were cleaned and repaired to reveal the wonderful painted beauty of centuries of history.
And while we didn’t do much shopping in Austria, in Cesky Krumlov, we indulged. Prices were so insanely cheap that it was hard not to.
And again, I’m running out of space. We spent a Sunday in Vienna. Since it was a national holiday, stores were closed, but we still could see the Lipizzaner stables and the magnificent buildings. Cruising down the river from there we saw castles on every hill, and gorgeous villages. We passed hills of grapevines and sat through several locks as the river grew increasingly lower. 
The tour ended in Budapest, which is actually three cities, although it’s named only for Buda and Pest. It’s an enormous sprawling city of lights. The government buildings along the river are beautiful in day but at night, they are spectacular. Major bridges cross the river 
between the two cities—Buda is the more modern government side. Pest is the gorgeous old city built on an old castle. When the river fell so far that our boat had to unload and travel on without us, the tour company put us up at a five-star Hilton built on the castle ruins. So again, we were out of range of pricey shops but had a wonderful opportunity to explore ancient streets.
Traveling in fall, with all the trees turning glorious 
colors, was a bonus for this Californian. I wish everyone had the opportunity to explore the world and understand a little more beyond their own community. What do you think? If you could, would you explore the world?
