Euro Trip 2015: Hallstat, Berchtesgaden Salt Mine, and Salzburg AUSTRIA

The day after our friends' wedding, we took a little side trip further south to a UNESCO world heritage site - Hallstatt, Austria.  

wow. It was like walking into a fairy tale village.  After seeing the Austrian Alps and Hallstatt, I'm convinced that these places are complete inspirations and origins for many Disney movies and fairytales.  Even Disneyland and Disney World emulate their parks after this real thing.  It was soooo pretty.  I kept emphasizing to the boys that this is the REAL Disneyland with all its magic and fairy tales.

Taji self- portrait!  Lately, the boys love to take selfies of themselves ha!

The drive to Hallstatt and back was the most scenic we have ever seen (even beats out the CA coastal drive along Big Sur.)  The mountains and gorgeous little villages with their beautiful window flower boxes was unforgettable.  We would drive through one mountain village thinking how beautiful was, to passing through another one that was just as beautiful if not more.  Poor Taji had a difficult time with the windy drive.  The motion of the car made him sleepy and throughout the drive his head kept rolling and falling with every turn.  I tried to put my hand against his chin to try to support his head but it was too hard.  Nevertheless, the painful yet beautiful drive was well worth it and we were able to see one of the most charming towns in the world!

Back in Leogang, the day of our departure.  

We went back to one of our favorite playgrounds across from our hotel.  There, they had the coolest zip line, and from then on, we saw these zip lines at most playgrounds around Austria and Czech! The boys loved everything about our 4 days in Leogang.  It was an active and action-packed weekend, full of adventure, playgrounds, zip lines, pretty cows and horses, fireworks, aerial performers (which by the way, were the boys' babysitters during the wedding dinner!).  The boys met new little buddies, learned German words and phrases (especially their daily "danke shen", "guten morgen", "guten tag").  They feasted on delicious breakfasts and Bavarian food (we loved those weiner schnitzels!).  Ah, it was delightful!  Leogang is an incredible Austrian vacation spot we would return to with the boys.  With all the lovely hotel resorts and activities, during the Winter there's awesome skiing in the Alps, and then during the summer and fall, they have mountain biking, ziplines, hiking, swimming, you name it!

kid sized austrian chalet!

what a blast!

On our drive to Salzburg, we stopped off at a well known and still active salt mine.  At the Berchtesgaden Salt Mine we bought tickets for the underground tour, which included these snazzy mining suits, a little train into the cave, then a couple really steep slides down into the salt mine!  What an experience!  The boys had fun and Taji especially learned all about where salt comes from and how it is made.  You can tell by Brad's face in the photo below, just how fast we slid down those slides!

Two nights and two whole days in Salzburg, Austria.  Birthplace of Mozart and home to Sound of Music.

Cathedral 

at the Hoehnsalzburg fortress

Salzburg was sweet little city, except by this point (already!) we were starting to burn out!  The weather was super hot and we were less than impressed with our hotel.  It would have been nice for the hotel to have had a pool for us to soak our tired feet in after all the walking around…. we learned the pool is a must when traveling with children in cities.  It not only calms them after the sightseeing, but its relaxing for the whole family). We soon discovered that even in off-season Salzburg, there were too many tourists (Asian tourists), crowded and under-construction streets…. just so much craziness for this momma and dad! We went from such a peaceful and relaxing weekend in the Alps, to a busy frantic place with 2 very energetic boys!  All the people and chaos made them even more hyper.  They didn't want to hold hands and were always on the move, and then with all the sightseeing, we had such anxiety over whether one of them would get either hit by a car or scooter, or trip over a cobblestone and fall on their face, or get kidnapped, or fall into one of the deep openings on the sidewalk they were repairing!  Can you imagine how way different traveling is with kids compared to before kids?  Brad and I shared in this most interesting experience.  We totally understand why some prefer not to travel the world with their kids- it's NOT EASY and not for the faint hearted!

Yet with all the chaos, it was an AWESOME experience to be there with our boys and see it through their eyes.  An experience we can all laugh about now, and will all remember for sure, as I have documented it very well for entertainment purposes!

Children's Museum

Birth place and home of Mozart- Taji's favorite composer!

Afro Cafe- our favorite stop to chill and regroup!

the crazy monkeys

We bought the Salzburg card for the 2 days we were there and took advantage of the cable railway up to the fortress, marionette museum, the childrens museum, explored Mozart's house, and even a cool little high speed boat tour on the river!

Mirabell Palace and gardens

Salzburg was where we learned how to truly travel with young boys under stressful and hot sweaty weather conditions!  We managed to see a lot and walked with the boys (no strollers!) all over the city.  We learned how its best to just drink a lot of wine at dinner and allow the boys to indulge in Ipad games so that we can have a little down time and enjoy our dinner.  It was honestly one of the best nights on our trip, such a fun dinner in Salzburg with our amazing little family!  We took many selfies!  We had wonderful food that everyone gobbled up, delicious dessert, great wine and beer, and of course, after all that, a fun little walk around town where it was not only 1) less crowded, 2) no Asian tourists, 3) much cooler at night 4) everything was illuminated so well it was like our own private night tour without all the stress.  I'm sure the wine helped, a lot!  I recommend it!