Christmas Break Part 2: Salzburg & Slovenia

After I left France, I had a 9 hour scenic train ride through Switzerland to Salzburg, Austria and went straight to the hostel.  Very early the next morning, Steph, who had just celebrated Christmas with family friends in Italy, arrived.  What Steph and I did was buy regional Eurail tickets for Austria, Slovenia & Croatia.  This pass allowed us to travel freely between these three countries a certain amount of days.  We took full advantage and went a whirlwind trip to 7 cities in 12 days!

Mozart's House

Hohensalzburg Castle

Salzburg was absolutely gorgeous.  They still had all of their Christmas lights and decorations up which gave it a great wintery vibe.  We visited Mozart's house & birthplace,  the Cathedral, the Mirabell Gardens, the Old Town & the Hohensalzburg Castle.  The sights were beautiful and we enjoyed taking in the atmosphere of the city center.  We ate our share of sausages & pretzels at the market, sipped on some mulled wine as we wandered around the castle, tried "mozartballs", had a delicious dinner of weiner schnitzel and discovered that Red Bull was invented by an austrian person.

Eating sausages w/mustard with the locals

Typical tourists with our audioguides

What we stumbled upon after dinner

Our next stop was Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia.  We did not have very high expectations of Ljubljana because we didn't know too much about it, but we were pleasantly surprised when we got there.  We stayed in a hostel that was converted from the old prison where each room used to be a prison cell.  When we got to the hostel, the girl at the desk recommended a good restaurant to us.  We wandered out to the restaurant and had a delicious meal.  I ordered a salad with chicken on top and Steph ordered a goulash.  We ended up swapping meals in the middle so we were able to try both things.  I personally think the goulash was better.  We washed our meal down with a traditional digestive that was really, really sweet and from the region and then wandered around the streets when we stumbled upon the bustling city center.  There were people everywhere!  There were stalls selling all kinds of products, people sipping on mulled wine, munching on different foods, bands playing & people singing karaoke.  It was freezing out, but we walked around the markets holding mulled wine in our hands to keep ourselves warm.  It was so surprising to see so much activity in the city that evening. Later we found out that their Independence Day falls between Christmas and New Year's Day, so they had a lot to be celebrating that week!

Shopping around and keeping warm with mulled wine

In Ljubljana we did the free city tour, which was very interesting, but it was very long.  Our tour guide really liked to talk, but it was difficult to concentrate on all of his stories when we were really cold and started to get hungry.  We learned a lot about the city though.  We visited the city center, stumbled upon people dancing to traditional music in the streets, saw the triple bridge, watched street performers, discovered that it was a big university city and found the university campus and so on.

Standing on the triple bridge with the main square behind me

Absolutely delicious meats.  So good that we went back the next night for more!

We took a day trip in the middle of our stay in Ljubljana to a town called Bled.  Bled is known for its beautiful lake that has a church on an island in the middle.  When we arrived in Bled, we walked all the way around the lake, which took about an hour and a half.  We stopped in the middle to have a hot coffee & a snack near the Olympic training center and we took lots of beautiful pictures because as you kept walking around, the view got better and better.  After we finished our lap around the lake we warmed up with delicious soup.  This day trip was totally worth the 12 euros we spent round trip for a tranquil day near the lake.

One of my favorite photos from the trip.
Lake Bled with the snow covered mountains in the background.

After our two day stay in Slovenia, we hopped back on the train to get our passports stamped and change our currency as we crossed the border outside of the European Union into Croatia...