The hills are alive...

Long time, no blog everyone.  I'm glad you all are enjoying my blog and I REALLY appreciate all the emails you are sending me.  Especially after a day like today, it's good to have them in my inbox.  But forget today, let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start...I left off with me just arriving at our Hostel in Salzburg on Friday evening.  Jess and I enjoyed a scrumptious dinner followed by a little tumble off the curb (on Jess's part) and then an early bed time.  Jess was a real trouper the next day, Saturday, and still toured the sites with me ALL day.  After scouting out a good bakery, we brought our bread and yogurt to the Mirabell Gardens (http://www.visit-salzburg.net/sights/mirabellgarden.htm) to eat.  I'm going to try this whole link thing so you guys can read a bit more about the sites I visit if you want, but I don't have to bore you with details.  Let me just say it was the most beautiful site to have breakfast!  Also, a scene from "Do Re Mi" was filmed there!  By the way, our entire trip to Salzburg was very much Sound of Music themed, in case you couldn't tell already.  After the gardens, we crossed the bridge right in front of Mozart's birthplace (click here to listen to some Mozart while you read, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZD9nt_wsY0) to get to the "old town".  This was basically the cutest little town ever.  There were no cars, lots of horse drawn buggies, and a huge market selling fresh fruit, veggies, and of course, hot dogs!  There were also a lot of beautiful churches, one being St. Francis (http://www.sacred-destinations.com/austria/salzburg-franziskanerkirche-franciscan-church.htm). The building itself was a tad more spectacular than the one in Raleigh, but I'm sure the parishioners aren't half as good haha.  We navigated through the narrow cobbled alleys to get to the main attraction of town, the Hohensalzburg fortress (http://www.salzburg-burgen.at/en/hohensalzburg/).  This was my first castle/fortress in my life and it fulfilled all my expectations!  There were cannons, watch towers,  and even a torture chamber with some torture devices on display!  We also went on a little audio tour and found out the "Salz" in Salzburg means salt and apparently salt mining was very important to the formation of this little town. After the fortress, which took a great while to get through, we headed right next store to the Nonnburg Abbey (http://www.visit-salzburg.net/sights/nonnberg.htm, where Frouline Marie attended. Starving, Jess and I trecked back down the mountain to gets some lunch in the fresh market.  On our way to the market, we stumbled across the magnificent graveyard the escape scene in TSOM was filmed.  What a lovely surprise for us!  Sandwiches in hand, we headed back to the Mirabell gardens to eat and while doing so, met the most wonderful lady who enlightened us a little about Austria, jazz, and classical music. We then stumbled across a baroque fair in a public park not far from the gardens. Salzburg had a slight obsession for Mozart, which Jess and I gladly would have traded for an obsession with The Sound of Music.  Despite my love for music, this fair didn't hold our interest long, and we hiked the way back to our hostel.  We met up with our roommates (a girl from Australia and one from Wales) for dinner and stayed up late talking about the differences among our countries. I'll spare you that discussion.  Anyway, the next day we rented bikes and biked to both the Von Trapp house (Schloss Leopoldskron http://www.schloss-leopoldskron.com/en/) and Hellbrun pallace.  These sites were a few kilometers (so European, I know!) outside of Salzburg, but they were SO worth the bike ride!  We naturally got turned around a few times, but when you're traveling, it's not getting lost, it's discovering new parts of the world. I HIGHLY recommend you just go to the link about Hellbrun pallace, http://www.hellbrunn.at/hellbrunn/english/start/index.asp.  It was just WAY too cool to descripe via blog post.  The trick fountains are the main attraction for most visitors, but for Jess and I, the Gazebo from the "16 going on 17" scene was a close second.  This palace had huge gardens surrounding every side, with carp filling the crystal clear waters.  It was really something to see.   Our train departed at 4 that day, so we returned our bikes and headed to the train station for our next town, Balzano.

We arrived in Balzano, Italy  at around 10:30 Sunday night and checked in to our hostel to find that we were rooming with a 50 year old cycling couple from holland.  One word for that: interesting.  I was awoken by him adjusting the blinds in his next to nothing underwear.  But they were both very nice, and that's what counts I guess.  After a good nights sleep and the complimentary breakfast (which we turned into breakfast and lunch), we headed out to explore the town.  This town was also very cute, but a little more modern with a very nice shopping area.  I got the impression that only wealthy people lived in Bolzano.  Jess and I fit right in with our sneakers and t-shirts. Though we did put our scrub clothes to work by hiking up a small mountain to get to one of the many castles in the area.  We then walked along the river for a bit and then retired to our hostel to eat some lunch and regroup.  We both booked our train tickets to our next locales for later on that night while we were back near the station.  Gelato sounded like a nice reward for all of our walking, so gelato we ate in the beautiful park right on the river bank.  We read for a few hours in the park before dinner, which we actually sat down for and had someone serve us.  Dinner was great, our first taste of Italian pizza on this trip, and knowing that we had a lot of time to kill (our train was at 1:09 AM), we lingered.  We then grabbed a drink with one of the guys in our hostel and discovered the little town of Bolzano had quite the night life.  At around 12:15, we headed back to the hostel, packed up and boarded our train.  It was PACKED!!!!!!!!  I managed to get a seat, but it did no good with the sleeping situation.  There were too many legs in one small space, too much noise, and too bright of lights to even dream of sleep  Jess was out in the aisle leaning on her bag, and needless to say, no sleep was had by any. The train did however get us to Florence, where we went our separate ways, Jess to Chinque Terra and me to Perugia.  I arrived in Perugia at around 9:30 AM with an unwanted parasite.  This Italian man sat next to me on the empty train and would not stop talking to me, even with my nose in my book!  I managed to shake him off in Perugia by shuffling to the lady's room and hiding out there for a good 15 minutes.  Mission accomplished.  I still had the problem of being in a big city with no hostel booked.  I went to information to ask about hostels.  No one spoke English.  They pointed me to the bus tickets booth...where no one spoke English.  There was literally NO ONE at the train station that spoke English.  I was down and out, but then spotted those famous golden arches glowing straight ahead.  I crossed the street to the McDonalds, and low and behold, the woman taking my order spoke English.  She pointed me to an internet cafe where I searched for an available hostel.  No luck at all.  Considering my very negative opinion of the customer service and tourist accommodations of the town after the first five minutes being there, I just decided to go elsewhere.  I checked availability for hostels in pretty much every town in Italy, and decided to hop a short train back to Florence, where at least I knew I liked the town.  Of course, the train I took ended up going the really long way to Florence, so it took me more than twice as long to get from Perugia to Florence than it did to get from Florence to Perugia.  Oh, and the twists keep coming.  The train ended up arriving at the station on the opposite side of town from the main station, which I was sure to get a hostel close to.  I walked about a mile at 1:30 in the afternoon with all of my stuff to get to the hostel.  But I'm here, and everything was worth it!  The hostel is amazing!  There's free wi-fi everywhere, a restaurant attached, people who speak english, and most amazingly and importantly, AC in my room!!!!!!!  I'm so exhausted from all the traveling and no sleep last night, so I'm off to find some food and then bed.  Thanks for all your well wishes again!  They really got me through a rough day today.

Cheers,

Katie