SHOWERS IN SALZBURG

Yep, that's right, it showered nearly every single day we were in Salzburg. I suppose it's a fairly normal occurance for them, but still, we weren't expecting it in August. Plus, we're from California. Rain? What's rain?

Anyhow, we arrived in Salzburg by train from Prague, which took about 8 hours. The first part of the trip, from Prague to Munich, went by pretty quickly. We had one of those semi-private compartments that can seat six. We got on the train with our humongous luggage and found a compartment with only one girl in it. We thought, GREAT! We don't have to worry about some lecherous smokey smelling guy molesting us through tunnels. (Scusi, scusi...ever see Eurotrip?)

Back to the poor girl. We probably frightened her so much that she got off the train before her exit. There she is, minding her own business, then in come three Asian girls with luggage that takes up nearly the entire compartment, and one of the girls looks ill. Could she be contagious? Bird flu, sars? Who knows?! And why is she wearing those Ponch sunglasses when it's raining outside? Maybe she's blind. Hmm...

Anyhow, after she gets off, we spread out and get comfy. Feet up, snacks out, everything. We're moving along, then come to a point where they check tickets and passports. (We got a cute choo choo stamp.) They also tell us that we have to move one train car down because the train is going to separate, and the half we're on isn't going to Munich. CRAP!

We send Vuong ahead to scout for an empty compartment while Gina and I deal with the luggage. Our bags are so heavy, that when we get into the new compartment, we just say 'forget it' about putting it up on the luggage racks, and just left them all in the aisle and put our feet up on or in between them. We eventually get to Munich and have to change trains. Wait, not trains. We hop on this two car thing that looks like a Disneyland tram. This is when the slow part begins. We stopped in every freaking city between Munich and Salzburg. Holy cow.

We were so happy when we finally arrived, especially as Salzburg had a nicer train station with those elevator things that Prague doesn't have. We take out an adequate amount of Euros at the ATM (unlike in Prague), then make our way out and hail a taxi. Cute guy in a full suit driving a Benz. Score. He starts packing the bags into the trunk. He rearranges the bags. He re-rearranges the bags. He starts unpacking the bags. He signals to the SUV taxi and tells him to take us. Bummer. =(

We arrive at Hotel Wolf-Dietrich (http://www.salzburg-hotel.at/). The hotel is located near a bunch of restaurants, a bunch of shopping, a grocery store, and luckily for Vuong, a pharmacy. Check in goes smoothly and we get a room in their building across the street. Let me tell you, Salzburg is a nice, clean, quiet town. I noticed it was quiet when the porter waived us over, just so he could tell us where the spa and breakfast rooms were in a nice low-decibel voice. We were the loudest people in that town. Anyway, back to checking in, so they tell us to go ahead to the room, the bags will be right up. OK, we're on the second floor, which is actually the third, because in Europe, the ground floor counts as zero. The porter, this skinny middle aged guy, hauls all of our bags up the four flights of stairs in two trips. OMG! He must be in excellent condition, because I would have died carrying them up two at a time.

Our room has nice big windows and satellite t.v. once again. (You should see some of the stuff they have on regular t.v. Wowwee) It also has these really cool automatic receding shutters for outside, so you can make it completely dark in the room. AND, even better, our hotel not only has breakfast from 7-11 - that's right, we can sleep in - they have tea time from 3-5 p.m. I love free food. We seriously saved money because we would load up on breakfast, walk back and catch tea, and only have to buy dinner and random snacks. So after we dump our stuff, we head back to the main lobby for tea. And that is where we met our pal Rudy.

Views from our hotel window: