A Weekend In Salzburg
Travel Tips for Salzburg
The Salzburg city card is the only city specific card we purchased in Europe. Most of the attractions on the card are close to one another making the price easy to recoup.
Mozart’s birthplace and Mozart’s adult home are both worth visiting, but choose his birth home if you only have time for one.
Europe’s oldest continuously operating restaurant, St. Peter Stiftskulinarium, is in Salzburg. Try saying that three times fast! You can visit as a walk guest in for lunch but you will need a reservation for dinner.
Schloss Hellbrunn (Hellbrunn Palace) is only worth visiting if you purchase an additional ticket for the trick fountains tour, or also plan to visit the neighboring gardens or zoo.
Hike up the large hill sides along both side of town. You’ll get tremendous views mostly to yourself, especially at sunrise and sunset.
Our Travels In Salzburg
Salzburg was probably the city I was most excited to photograph in Europe. It’s overshadowed as a travel destination since it’s so close to other more famous cities like Vienna, Munich, and Prague, but I loved what I had seen and read before traveling. And no, the Sound of Music being filmed in town did not pull me in despite that being a huge claim to its fame. What I expected was to share fantastic city views with nice people in between meals of great schnitzel. And that’s almost exactly what we got!
Getting to Salzburg from Munich is incredibly easy thanks to a direct train line. The German train network issues a day pass for the German state of Bavaria that also includes Salzburg. It’s a sweet deal because you can effectively ride anywhere in Bavaria for free and then get to Salzburg before your day pass ends. It would be perfect if the German trains could arrive anywhere on time. We chose to go straight to Salzburg early to enjoy as much time in the city as possible.
It turned out that our host was a professional tour guide in Austria so we got way more tips and tricks than expected! Our friends know that we love sharing travel ideas so it was fun receiving an idea dump back.
He also recommend a Salzburg City Pass which grants access to many attractions around town. We rarely buy city passes, but this one was too cheap and convenient to ignore. Most of the sites were within walking distance of one another. We could now visit Mozart’s adult home, his birthplace, Festung Hohensalzburg (Fortress Hohensalzburg), and Hellbrunn Palace among many other major sites. Going to any three places promoted on the card would recoup our purchase price. For three days we scrambled around town seeing everything on the pass before climbing up hilltops for sunset.
Day one was easy and fun - we visited Mozart’s residence, his birth home, and very quickly decided that we didn’t need to do both. His adult home was much simpler than you’d expect. It was filled with memorabilia and trivia about him and his family, but you could easily get through it in an hour. However, his birth home was different. Memorabilia and trivia were included, but there were many more exhibits, family heirlooms, and videos. It felt like reading through a Mozart textbook in a fun way. If you visit Salzburg, pick one of his two homes, and preferably make that choice his birth home.
For lunch we swung by St. Peter Stiftskulinarium, the oldest restaurant in Europe and possibly even the world! Just a casual pop in to see how they’ve held up since approximately the year 800. I am happy to report that St. Peter’s is doing just fine, having embraced the modern world by being an Instagram ready haven! We found neon signs, colorful shag decor on couches, vibrant place mats, and upbeat music. Oh yeah, and good food. We only ordered desert because of the prices but they tempted us to splurge on more after only a couple of bites. Food aside, it was almost surreal to find so much modern energy in such a historic venue. They are the definition of keeping up with the times which is probably how St. Peter’s survived this long.
Each evening was spent hiking uphill. By Salzburg’s standards it’s a walk in the park. By any other standard, it’s a hike.
There are two massive hills flanking the city. The one on the north has a historical castle that’s now a monastery while the hill on the south has a modern science museum on top. However, the hills were not alive with the Sound of Music. They’re mostly filled with car honks echoing from below. Both hills have spectacular views of Salzburg so we can’t recommend them enough! We first chose to visit the southern hill for a view of Fortress Hohensalzburg. Sunset is especially beautiful from this hill because as the sun drops the sky color kicks off behind the Fortress and then the entire city glows into night life. We captured some great photos during this time and rewarded ourselves with awesome Wiener schnitzel afterwards.
Well, I did. Chandni would never.
Wiener schnitzel is different than regular schnitzel thanks to being veal while the latter is typically pork, chicken or something not veal. It also has no relation to the delicious hot dog chain. I was so excited to finally have that honker of a deep fried meat slab deep in front of me that I might have finished it in a couple of bites! Not really sure what happened thanks to the food coma I entered afterwards. What I am sure of is we arrived to the restaurant without a reservation so we were placed in a shared table upstairs and a little out of the way. That’s where we met Jacob. Jacob is a young Italian state police officer from Rome working in the towns near Venice. He was probably the best possible person to meet in Salzburg because we were next heading to the Dolomites and then Venice! We spent most of dinner chatting with him and taking notes on his food, drink, and destination tips.
The second day was similar to the first although much more medieval. We finally got to visit the Fortress Hohensalzburg which is the orihinal fortress guarding Salzburg. Over the centuries it housed the Prince Archbishops that ruled Salzburg, tortured prisoners, and trained men for combat. Now it sells plushie souvenirs inside.
Amongst other modern features is a scale model of Fortress Hohensalzburg and historic Salzburg made from pure salt! It’s so stinkin’ cool and also fitting once you learn that salt mines made Salzburg terribly rich – Salzburg translates to Salt Fort. From the top of the Hohensalzburg you feel like everything in Austria is visible. Every window, terrace, and walkway we visited had beautiful views of the countryside and city below. The original chapels and dungeons still felt somber. It’s entirely worth a half day visit or more, but the same can’t be said about our next stop, Hellbrunn Palace. This palace just outside the main historic area of town was built as a summer day home for the Prince Archbishops. It’s now an art and historical museum that you can probably see in just over an hour.
However, the trick fountain area is worth spending extra money to visit. The fountains are a hydraulic marvel of their time from the 1600s. Water jets propel animatronics, create cascading passages, and spray visitors from hidden spots along the way. We got wet as part of the fun! The palace borders the city gardens, zoo, and other fun areas where you’ll likely want to spend just as much time – if not more.
Salzburg has all the major and minor attractions of big city while feeling like that small town you saw in a Lifetime movie. By morning you can visit a modern science museum, grab lunch at a Michelin star restaurant, and walk it off by exploring a plaza or cute niche shop like a year round Christmas museum. There are so many strong culinary influences from Germany and Italy that you’re sure to find something you’ll love eating. There were still plenty of reasons to return despite it’s small size. Some of those reasons are underground like touring the historic salt mines. Some are high above town like exploring more of the hills and nearby mountains. But the biggest draw to return are the welcoming people that made our visit special.
