Continuing the trip through Austria, the longest stretch on the bus

Here is the birthplace of Mozart. A small 2 bedroom place, not a lot of room for 7 kids.

Here is a picture of the gardens in the middle of Salzburg, in the background at the top of the hill you can see the fortress, that has been around for about 1000 years.

These are the stairs that Maria comes running down with the kids in the Sound of Music.

This morning we left Hallen, and were spending time in Salzburg. It only took us about 30 minutes to get to Salzburg, and then we had a guided walking tour of the city. We saw the gardens in the center of the city where some of Sound of Music was filmed (although apparently very few people from Austria know much about the movie or have seen it, just last year they finally decided to create a Sound of music museum although our tour guide figures it will be another 4 years before it gets built). After the tour of the old town, and seeing things about Mozart (his birthplace was Salzburg) we were free to go on our own for a while in the city. Karen, Beth and I decided to walk up to the monistary where more of the sound of music was filmed (as Karen is a fan). So that was very nice to see. Apparently it is one of 23 monistaries in Salzburg and 74% of the population is Catholic.

After we left Salzburg it was back on the bus for another 3 hours, until shortly after crossing the Czech Border, one thing I found interesting is there are no border crossings between the EU member countries. The Czech border gates were still all up, but they were unmanned, I would assume that it is due to the fact the Czech Republic only recently joined the EU, and haven't got them down yet. They also haven't switched to the Euro yet.

We then stopped for dinner at the Budwiser brewery, as Budwiser was originally a Czech beer. Anheiser Busch bought the rights to it, and then due to some poor trademark protection, the Czechs couldn't make their own beer, in the 90's they got it all worked out and were again allowed to brew their beer.

Then we were back on the bus for another two hours. We got to the teams hotel in Prague, this is where we were now going to leave them and head off to our hotel on the other side of town. I prefer ours however, as we are only 5 minutes from the rink and they are 30 - 45 depending on traffic.