I really want to visit Salzburg as I saw its beautiful scenery in my favourite musical movie “The Sound of Music”. During my East Europe tour, we visited Salzburg, one of the best-preserved city centers north of the Alps, just for half day.
We arrived at noon after lunch time, Mirabell Garden was the only place that’s scheduled to be visited in the tour itinerary. A bus tour with “The Sound of Music” branding was parked on the parking lot, we took some pictures while waiting for our friends stopped by at the toilet. Entering the garden, we welcome by a woman statue fountain in the middle of an circle pool surrounding by flowers. The Mirabell Gardens were opened to the public by Emperor Franz Joseph in 1854, it becomes a horticultural masterpiece and popular backdrop for photographers.
The next part of the garden was larger, it’s the main garden decorated with beautiful flowers, statues, also a big fountain. As my friends were busy pose and taking many pictures, I had to make myself available for others helping them taking pictures so they could take my picture in return. Otherwise I would only had the scenery without me for documentation. Lucky after quite a long time, they remembered me :-), asked me to go to the middle of the garden to take some pictures behind the flowers with the Mirabell palace as the background. The Baroque masterpiece of Schloss Mirabell Palace was initially built as "Schloß Altenau" under the reign of Prince Archbishop Wolf Dietrich von Raitenau in 1606. It was a present for his concubine Salome Alt and most famous for its splendid garden.
When I’ve returned to Indonesia, I explored Mirabell garden, I've just found and realized, actually Pegasus fountain is one of the landmark beside the palace. Unfortunately we didn’t go through the Pegasus fountain to run down the hedge arcade along the Grand Parterre what Fräulein Maria and the Trapp children did in the movie. It’s quite very short time to visit the beautiful garden, no time to enjoy the scenery by sitting on the available benches for visitors. We left through the gate which was guarded by sporty man statues at the left and right side formed the gate arch.
Our guide brought us to the other side of the city, the Makartsteg, a bridge over the Salzach River in Salzburg′s city centre. It was named after the 19th century Historicist painter Hans Makart, who was born and raised in Salzburg. It’s raining when we crossed the bridge which was full of various padlocks from couple lovers who’re falling in love. Makart became famous as a painter of the Viennese Historicism, providing artwork for many of the pompous buildings of the Ringstraße. The Makartsteg is open for pedestrians and cyclists only.
Continued walking to the old cities to visit Mozart’s house, we went through many small aisles, the guide didn’t allow us to split as there were many people around, he would find difficulty to find the lost one. Finally we reached the house, it’s not too big, you must pay to see inside the house on the 2nd floor which has become a museum now, none of us was interested in it. The guide was giving us free time to explore the area, so many beautiful shops around it, which sold souvenirs, bags, etc. Some restaurants and attractive café design were also available there, we passed by a restaurant which displayed the big size shrimp, bread to attract people.
I visited some souvenir shops to buy small stuffs such as cute magnetic for mom and myself, also visited chocolate stores which sold Mozart (the genius musician who was born in Salzburg) chocolate for gifts. Actually many souvenirs were cute, unfortunately it’s quite expensive when I calculate in IDR, most of the time I cancelled to buy because of the price. Beside that, it’s quite difficult to bring the easy breakable once, such as house miniature, glasses, decorative plate or crystal, clocks, etc. Most of souvenirs I bought was chocolates and magnetic decoration for fridge
The local guide brought us to the bus stop area went through the same way, including Makarsteg bridge, as now it’s not raining, we could take some beautiful pictures with the padlocks, the river and beautiful mountains as the background. So many tourist buses were parking on the area where we were waiting for our bus, there were benches for us to sit. The city was ready for tourist visit, they kept maintaining well the tourism places which were existed many years even centuries, also provided and arranged well the infrastructure to progress with the modern world. I also like the weather there, although it’s quite cold and windy, we should wearing jacket at least. If you would like to experience “The Sound of Music”, you should at least spend one whole day in Salzburg. You could join the local tour with has short or long hour trips to trace the movie places.
No comments:
Post a Comment