Archive for June, 2004

Salzburg was everything the pictures and movies show with the bonus of actually being there. We stayed in a ski lodge just outside of town (6km) so a bus ride was our mode of transportation to and from Salzburg. Staying in the lodge in the off-season was excellent. We practically had the place to ourselves and the service was superb at their restaurant. We toured the Old Town with all the history and even saw their new police station (only 20 years old – because in a country with buildings hundreds of years in age, 20 is nothing). We relearned that Salzburg used to be its own country. With salt (hence the name of the city) as the life of the old world, the Salzburgers were able to control their destiny……that is until outsiders, like Napoleon, starting moving in. The weather presented rain on only one day and so we went shopping that day through all the little stores along the narrow streets. We visited the salt mines, countryside and ice caves to make for excellent trips. The people were really nice and most spoke enough English to help us when needed. Going back will be fun.

Excuse the lack of pictures but our broken camera did not capture images as well as a working one.

Salzburg was everything the pictures and movies show with the bonus of actually being there. (And, unlike in Paris, we adored the food!) We stayed in a ski lodge just outside of town (6km) so a bus ride was our mode of transportation to and from Salzburg. Staying in the lodge in the off-season was excellent. We practically had the place to ourselves and the service was superb at their restaurant. We toured the Old Town with all the history and even saw their new police station (only 20 years old – because in a country with buildings hundreds of years in age, 20 is nothing).

We traveled from Paris to Salzburg via the Orient Express. This was an overnight train that we boarded at 6pm so we had a little dinner in our sleeping quarters before enjoying the scenery. We were due to be in Salzburg at 5:30am and when we awoke at 6:30am thought we had missed our stop. Fortunately, even trains have delays and we were an hour behind schedule which meant we did not miss our stop. The feel of the train made it easy to sleep but the excitement overpowered that a little and Lori spent some time just watching the night time country side and small villages pass by. I would recommend a train ride while in Europe. I wish we had time to see Europe by rail or bicycle or car so that little surprises could be discovered along the way without having to plan actual events of things to do.

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Paris was very beautiful and had tons of stuff to do. We could have spent another four days doing things not yet done. The subway was a blast to ride making our passes extremely helpful. The Eiffel Tower was of course one of our main hot spots and was better than expected. We spent hours just walking around checking out the old buildings, people and city happenings. We met some friends (the original people we almost went to Europe with as described ont he opening web page) on the Steps of the Orsay as we were eating lunch. They had just finished spending a couple of hours in the museum and were ready for their own food. Funny how things go – meeting them unplanned and in a very large city. We spent about 30 minutes in the Orsay because Lori and I know how to speed tour. We saw the usual; Notre Dame, Eiffel Tower, Tall Black Building, Arch de Triumph, Louver, Orsay, on and on AND the unusual like Pig Alley. That is a cool place. Funny how in Louisiana you go to the French Quarter and in Paris you go to the Latin Quarter. Well, we went because when in Rome…….

The only thing that was not up to our expectations was the food. We were really disappointed because we figured everything would be pastry and frenchy. The best food we actually ate there was Italian – go figure. And, NO ICE. You would think that the ingredients to ice were under lock and key. If you got 3 cubes of ice, that was extravagant.

An excellent surprise for us were the bicycle tours (Fat Tire Bikes). It is run by an Aggie and he uses Aggies as tour guides. We went to Versailles and toured Paris through the narrow streets and sidewalks. Unfortunately, our camera started malfunctioning towards the end of our Paris trip so some things were not captured on digital-film.

Lori and Emil traveled to Paris and Salzburg in June 2004

Our trip started out as a tag-along with another group that was going to England and Paris because they needed to fill their quota in order to keep their reduced ticket prices. After I started researching the trip I decided we should go see what we want to see and not limit ourselves to what the original group was going to do. Since Lori is from the second biggest Paris in the world, we had to go see the biggest one. Therefore, we spent four days in Paris and four days in Salzburg with a ride on the Orient Express connecting the two. Needles to say, we had a blast!

We left Bryan on June 19th to spend the evening with JJ & Becky (of Flower Mound). Our flight was not due to leave until the 20th, after lunch, so this was an opportunity for us to catch up with them. JJ was kind enough to drive us to the airport (over his lunch break) so that we would not have to pay the outrageous parking fees at the airport. This also allowed JJ & Becky to leave our car parked along their front curb so that the neighbor kid would stop parking his vehicle there.