Kosher Travel with Fran and David: Third "Great" Grandparents Trip - Summary of our week in Austria

We are writing this on Motzaei Shabbat at the beginning of week #2 of our trip.

Let's start by clearing up a misconception that has been created by our title for this trip. We have not yet become Greatgrandparents. Although we look forward to the day with great anticipation, we have no married grandchildren yet.

We however look at the opportunity to travel alone with our grandchildren as a singular memorable experience that allows us to develop wonderful bonds and connections. And therefore, those trips are great! So the title becomes the Third GREAT Grandchildren Trip. Each of our grandchildren trips have been GREAT and this one is no exception. We actually received humorous messages from a couple of our children asking whether, in this very fast paced world, they had blinked and missed something!

On Sunday morning we began the drive to the area just south of Salzburg, Austria. When we told Eden, Emunah and Kyra that we would leave at 7 AM, we received looks of astonishment and bewilderment. But we explained that there was a five hour drive in front of us and while the first part of the drive would be four hours straight, we would then be able to space out the final 100 kms. or so, by stopping and visiting a number of attractions that we believed would break up the day and make the driving experience a bit more interesting.

And while we do try to stick to schedule, it was admittedly difficult to leave precisely at 7 AM, but we were on the road by 7:15 AM, following the instructions that Waze was mapping out for us on the iPhone.

Because we are so far behind the eight ball in terms of reporting daily (about a week behind), rather than give a detailed day by day report, we are going to try and catch up by summarizing each of the places that we visited from Sunday till Thursday last week.

If your style of touring is anything like ours, ie; packing in as many attractions as possible into your day; spending minimal time on shopping and meals (because you made this long trek to actually see something unique, do something different, etc), and if you are travelling with a party of 5, then the cost of touring can become quite expensive. When touring Austria, there are many "passes" that group multiple attractions in one card for a single price. We looked at a number of them and determined that the best for our itinerary was the Salzburgerland Card. Many other cards offer discounts of 20% or 2 for 1 offers, but the SalzburgerlandCard packages close to 120 attractions that you enter for free once you have purchased the Card. The card costs 66 Euros per adult or 33 Euros per child (under 16) and is good for 6 days of touring. Our total for the 5 of us was 297 Euros.

Since we have now completed our Austrian portion, we can report that by using the SalzburgerlandCard from Sunday till Thursday, we visited attractions that would have totalled over 700 Euros had we not had the card. So we saved about 400 Euros or close to $600 Canadian.

Our advice to anyone visiting this part of the world is to spend a bit of time researching the various cards to determine which works best for you. If you are headed for the Salzburg area, we believe that this card works wonders. It will certainly save you money.

Here is a brief summary of the attractions that we visited from Sunday till Thursday.

Sunday:

Gerlos Pass - the Gerlos Pass was the first of many dramatic mountain passes that we crossed in our trip thus far. It is the doorway to many of the sites in the Salzburg Tourist area and is a series of hairpin switchbacks in the road that first allow you to climb to the top of the mountain at an altitude of about 5000 feet and then wend your way down the other side. The first road across the Gerlos Pass was built in 1630. The road that we took was completed in 1962 and you pay a special toll to pass across it. At the very top, we stopped to have our lunch and enjoy the scenery.

Krimml Falls & The World of Water at Krimml - as we descended from the Gerlos Pass, we were greeted by the sight of the Krimml Falls, Austria's highest waterfall. The local tourism bureau has capitalized on this beautiful natural resource by building an interactive exhibit dealing with "water" and combining it as a package with the Falls visit. This was a very good spot for us to stretch our legs after the 4 hour morning drive from Davos.

The National Park 360 Exhibit in Mittersillt - after we left Krimml Falls we stopped at what we felt would be a worthwhile exhibit. It was called the Nationalpark 360 in Mittersill. And it featured a 360 degree wraparound movie of scenes of the national parks in the area. We had visions of Ontari-ari-ario at the Expo 67 World's Fair in Montreal. But the movie here was boring and dull with no music to liven it up. Additionally there were some displays of the flora and fauna in the area, a climbing wall etc. At 10 € each, it would have been a disaster, but given that it was included in our SalzburgerlandCard and situated right on the road we were driving, made it much less painful. Would not recommend stopping here.

From this stop we headed right to our accommodation at Wagrain which is covered in more detail below.

Monday:

The Salzburg Fortress and Funicular - this was to be our Salzburg Day. So early in the morning, we drove into town and parked for free at the Outlet mall and took the bus into town. We walked thru the centre of town, stopped to point out Judengasse (Jew Street) from the time when there was a Jewish Community here, admired the old architecture and marvelled at the huge Fortress that lurks over the city below. It is very high and huge.

We walked thru a section of the shopping street and could not help but notice Mozart everywhere. Mozart was born here in 1726 and lived here for many years. Salzburg was where he composed many of his famous works. So the city fathers have capitalized on the Mozart phenomena and are marketing Mozart everywhere. There are concerts and museums dedicated to Mozart. A large statue of Mozart is in the centre of the Mozartplatz Square.

Also, a popular chocolate has been developed called the Mozart Kuggelen which is marzipan covered with chocolate. The local Austrian brand is not kosher, but the Reber brand knockoff from Germany is certified kosher, and is available throughout Salzburg. So we all stopped off and had our first Reber Kuggelen experience.

From here we walked to the Mozart Square and then visited the Panorama Museum which features large murals in a 26 metre circumference, painted by JM Sattler in the early 1800s that depict life as it was in Salzburg 200 years ago. He painted these scenes from the vantage point of the HohenSalzburg Castle. It was a very detailed painting in the round and is well worth visiting.

We headed over to the square in front of the funicular and took some pictures of the man on the globe, the giant chess set and then we added to the graffiti that adorned the underside of the globe.

And then we headed to the funicular which took us to the top of the of the hill that is the site of the castle overlooking the entire city of Salzburg.

Construction on the castle began in 1077 and while it looks like many a battle could have been fought there, there never were any, because any army that thought of capturing Salzburg took one look at the imposing castle and had second thoughts about the chances of success. The castle eventually surrendered without a battle to Napoleon in the 1800's and in recent years is home to thousands of tourists who flock up for the amazing views.

When we descended from the castle, we walked over to the Mirabell Palace and Gardens, site of the filming of many of the famous scenes of the Von Trapp family in the Sound of Music.

Tuesday:

Archery in Niedersill - on Tuesday morning, we drive about an hour to the small town of Niedersill where we had booked archery lessons for our group. We were using professional archery equipment and our instructor, though not speaking any English at all, was very patient with us and successfully guided us in the fine details of archery. It was really a wonderful way to start the day, and it was an activity that was enjoyed by all.

Weisssee Glacier World and Gondola Lift - from Niedersill, it was a short drive to the gondola lift that would carry us to to top of a very high mountain where we hiked around a glacier lake called Weisssee. It took about 20 minutes for the Gondola to complete the journey to the top and the scenery and fresh air on top was wonderfully refreshing.

The Grossklockner HochAlpenStrasse - we continued our Tuesday adventure by driving to the top of the Grossklockner High Altitude Road, one of the tallest mountain passes in all of Europe. The pass is 48 kms. Long and consists of 36 hairpin turns which take you to the top of the Grossklockner Mountain to a height of about 2500 metres. When we first drove this road a number of years ago in the early summer, there was still deep snow atop the mountain. But this time, in late August, there was only snow on the peaks facing us, and the temperature where we were was in the low to mid teens. From the top, you had a bird's eye view of the entire area. Had we continued down the other side of the mountain, we would have ended up in Italy.

The Kitzlochklamm Gorge - on the way back, with three very exhausted teenagers in tow, we made our final stop of the day at the Kitzlochklamm. A klamm in Austrian is a gorge. And Kitzlochklamm is a very deep gorge. You begin at the bottom of the gorge beside the river and begin a gradual climb until you are facing a very tall raging waterfall. You then climb up the stairs in front of the falls. It seems like hundreds of stairs (actually 450 steps) till you reach the top and then you begin the walk through the forest, gradually descending till you reach the entrance to the gorge, where you first began. It takes about an hour and seeing that I had promised Kyra that this attraction was relatively flat (when it clearly was not), for the rest of the trip, there was a running joke about the flatness of each attraction to which I would take the girls.