Today we drive to Salzburg from Hallstatt. It is only abut a 1 hour and 20 minute drive to our hotel in Salzburg, so we were in no hurry to leave here early. I have requested an early check-in, but we will not hear if that is an option until later this morning, most likely after we have already left here.
I woke up about 6:15 AM and headed out to the kitchen to make my coffee. I have been using some of the Nestle Coffee Pods I purchased in Grindelwald and carried with us, hoping to use them somewhere. The coffee machine here is not a coffee pod machine, it uses a filter and ground coffee. Luckily, there were already some filters here, so I have been opening the pods I brought and dumping out the ground coffee from them into a filter. Two pods makes about the right amount of coffee.
I ate a muffin with my coffee and worked on the blog and also spent more time on trying to decide which testing site we would use for our Covid PCR test that we need to have to fly home. I opted for the one that is within walking distance from our Salzburg Apartment. I also made the call that we should go ahead and get the test done today, which is the first day of our three day pre-flight window for testing. It will be nice to know the results, one way or another, and then we have more time to plan for what we need to do if there is an issue. It also gives us more time in case we need to redo the test.
Once Stephanie got up, we each filled out an online registration form for the testing facility, and we each received a QCR registration code via email. We will need to show this code and an ID in order to take the test.
We finished the last of our packing and took the suitcases down to the car. On the way out, we saw the nice lady who lives in the lower unit and chatted with her for a while before returning upstairs. We were going to wait as long as we could, it was only about 9:15 AM and check-out was supposed to be by 10:00 AM.
We took another load down to the car, and we ran into the lady and her husband this time. We had another nice chat, and she told us we could stay longer if we needed, no one was renting the apartment today after we left, and the cleaning lady was not scheduled to arrive until noon.
We did not want to stay past 10;00 AM, our plan was to go ahead and drive to our Salzburg Apartment, and if it was not yet available when we arrived, we would just park in their parking lot and walk to the Covid Testing facility for our test, hoping to get there before noon. They had indicated on their website that if the test was performed before noon, we would get our test results later that same night.
The drive to Salzburg was uneventful except for one road that Google Maps took us on to connect from one highway to another. It was a really narrow road, and we had to stop or pull over a few times for opposing traffic to pass. There were also several small one lane bridges we crossed. Eventually the road got a little wider, and then we were back on a highway. It had been about a 8 km trip on the smaller road, and we just wondered if it was really necessary, or it just made the trip slightly shorter, which was why we had been routed that way by Google Maps, to take the shortest route.
We arrived at the address for the apartment, and now tried to find their parking lot, which was located about 150 meters from the apartment building on another side street. We had the other address for the parking lot, and found the matching address on a building, but we did not see any specific parking places with signs for our Apartment Company. We had been told to only park in the assigned spaces that had the property signage. I sent a message to the company to ask for more specific directions to the parking spaces. In the meantime, we went back toward the apartment building and just paid for parking on the street near the building and walked over to it to find the way inside. I had received an email just before 11:00 AM, while driving to Salzburg, stating that we could check-in early . I guess I need to mention that there is no one onsite at the apartment building, which houses five different apartments. Check-in was “contactless”, and we were given a code for access to the building’s main door and also to our unit.
We had trouble finding the door to use our code on to enter the lobby of the building. There were a couple of locked doors, and then there was a fence on one side with a gate, and inside the fence was a playground for what appeared to be a pre-school. While we were walking by the gate, a lady inside the fence pointed to a side door and the gate in the fence, indicating we needed to go through the gate to access the building. We saw the entry keypad, and we used our code to enter the outside door, and then headed up the stairs to find Unit 5, our apartment. It was at the top of the three story building, and we were extremely excited knowing we would need to carry our luggage up that many floors!!
Once we arrived in the actual apartment unit, I found out that we had received better instructions for both the building access and the parking lot location in the email they sent with our access code. I had not scrolled down the email on my phone to see that there were pictures showing all the information we needed, oh well. We went and got the car from the street parking space and parked by the building gate to unload our luggage, it was a long haul up the three flights of stairs.
Since we only paid for a little over an hour of parking on the street, and some of that was already lapsed, we decided to try and find the apartment’s parking lot again and not have worry about having to get back to the paid parking spot before out ticketed time expired. We drove over to the apartment parking area, which we now easily found with the extra instructions and pictures from the email. We had been in the right pace before, but the parking spaces were behind the building and we needed to drive down a side entrance to find them in the back.
We drove to the back of the building but all of the spaces were already filled with cars. I sent another message asking where we parked if the spaces were full, and the response was that they should not be full, there were only three of the five apartments booked, and there were five marked spaces. We only saw four, so on the way out of the lot we looked harder and found one narrow space that was by itself by the entrance to the access road to the other spaces. It was between a wall and a ramp that went down to some other underground parking. There was a sign designating it as a parking spot for our apartments. It was a really tight fit. I tried to back in first, but then turned around and pulled in, it was easier to see and easier to get into the middle of the narrow space. I sent another message to ask for confirmation that this was indeed a real parking spot.
With the parking expedition completed, we put in the address of the Covid Testing facility onto Google Maps. We had a hard time getting the walking directions to update as we walked, and were not sure at first that we were going the correct direction. There is a high stone cliff surrounding the old town of Salzburg on this side, and we wondered if this wall was blocking cell coverage.
We had to actually walk through a pedestrian tunnel to go through the wall, which now appeared to be a sort of a natural stone mountain, not a man made wall. Once on the other side, the directions worked much better, so maybe the wall was blocking the cell signal.
We continued the walk toward the Covid testing facility. Google Maps took us past the actual address, so we did not find the location at first. We wondered around a little before actually looking at the building numbers and not relying on Google Maps anymore. The testing facility was sort of tucked behind a large stone column for a small tunnel, but we eventually found it. The unfortunate part was that the facility was now closed until 1:00 PM for lunch. It was just barely past 12:30 PM, and we had apparently just missed getting there before their lunch break.
We walked around for a bit to kill time and then headed back to the facility to wait for them to open. Since there were no appointments, we wanted to be first in line in case there were a lot of people arriving after lunch for tests.
No one else showed up while we waited, and the facility opened on time and we entered and showed our registration QCR codes and passports for identification. They gave us each a “gargle” kit and we paid the Euro 57.00 fee for each test via credit card. Neither of us had ever done a gargle test so we had to ask for instructions. Basically, you put the saline solution from a small bottle into your mouth, after coughing first. Then we had to gargle with our heads back for 30 seconds, which was a long time. Then we spit the solution back into two different bottles to split the sample. The bottes were closed and then placed back into the small bar coded bag. That was it.
Lunch at the Biergarten
It was already about 1:30 PM, so we needed to get some lunch. We headed toward the old town of Salzburg and found an outside Biergarten. We went in and took some seats in their outside courtyard. The menu was typical of many of the places we have eaten at in Austria so far, but it also had a couple of different dishes. I ordered the pork roast with potato dumpling and slaw and Stephanie ordered a stuffed pork roast with pretzel stuffing, also served with slaw. We also ordered two beers and a couple of pretzels.
The food was good, Stephanie thought her pork was a little fatty, but I thought it had a better flavor than mine. Of course, it was all too much to eat for lunch, so we will probably not eat much for dinner again tonight.
After lunch, we walked into the old town where we had stayed the last time we were in Salzburg in 2010. We could not find the hotel we stayed at last time using Google search, apparently it was not open any longer. We tried to find the location we thought it was in while walking around but could not remember exactly which street it was on in the old part of Salzburg.
Salzburg Cathedral
We did stop and visit the Christmas Shop again. This is a shop that specializes in decorating and painting whole real eggs that are drained. Their collection was even larger than before, they seemed to be branching out into different seasons, not just Christmas. We made a purchase for this trip to take home as a souvenir. Last time our egg was Christmas themed, this time it was decorated with scenes from the Old Salzburg.
Inside The Salzburg Cathedral
While we were in the area, we visited the Salzburg Cathedral and walked inside. It was still beautiful.
We visited a couple of more stores and then used Google Maps to direct us back home. We were not much farther away than we had been when walking to the Covid test Center, about a 14 minute walk back through the outer wall tunnel.
Buildings in Old Town Salzburg
We headed over to the car parking lot first since it was on the way back to the apartment. We found that one of the other parking spots in the back was now open. It looked a little safer, and was larger, so we moved the car from our small single spot to that one. We then stopped at the Spar grocery for supplies. The grocery is between the parking lot and the apartment, so it is pretty close. We purchased our supplies, mostly items for breakfast and also some refreshments, water, wine and a Coke light for Stephanie.
I did not look to see if there was a coffee machine and/or coffee pods in the apartment before we left for our tests earlier, so I might have to come back once we see what the coffee situation is when we get back to the apartment.
We walked back to the building and then up all of the stairs to our unit. We were tired and thirsty. It had been sort of a stressful morning with the apartment parking and apartment access issues and with the Covid Testing. It had started out as a cloudy day, but by about 2;00 PM, the sun was out and it was about 69 degrees. We had forgotten to take water with us when we left earlier, so we wer both really thirsty. I don’t think we thought about being out that long after we finished the tests.
Unfortunately, the weather forecast for tomorrow is for rain all day, so we felt that we almost needed to make the most of this sunny day in Salzburg. It was now too late to get in the car and drive out to see some of the sights used in the movie The Sound of Music, which was one of the main objectives of returning here and having a car. Many of these sights are about 30 minutes by car outside of the city.
Since it was almost 5:00 PM, we figured many of those sights would be closing anyway, so we just relaxed in the apartment and tried to put together a plan for tomorrow. We saved the location of several Sound of Music Movie sights in the Google Maps app so we would easily find them tomorrow. There are a couple of churches we can visit, one is from the main wedding scene in the movie. At least churches are inside and would keep us out of the rain.
We also put together a plan for getting to the Munich Airport on Friday for our flight home. Since we will be turning in the car the day before, to get to the airport, we will need to take a bus to get us from the apartment to the Salzburg Train Station, and then two trains to get us from there to the Munich Airport. We will catch a 7:30 AM bus from a stop near the apartment and arrive at the Munich Airport around 10:15 AM, a little more than two hours before our fight at 12:20 PM.
We will get a preview of the bus route when we take the bus back from the Salzburg Train Station after turning in our rental car on Thursday afternoon, so that should help orient us to using the bus stop near our apartment, and to the train station itself.
We did our last load of laundry and then just relaxed with some wine and snacks. Even though we did not feel as if we had done a lot today, we were tired from the stress of getting here. We watched a little TV and then retired for the night abut 10:00 PM. It is a little noisy in the apartment from the road traffic outside, especially since we have to keep some windows open for ventilation, so hopefully, I will be able to fall asleep.