Salzburg!

Our third and last city to visit in Austria was Salzburg. We only stayed for a couple of days, but it's a small town and that seemed to be a good length of time to experience the city. The drive from Graz to Salzburg was breathtaking as we drove through the Alps, but once we got into Salzburg it became somewhat hellish. It took us forever to find our hotel...we knew exactly where it was, so we kept driving around in the same place. Finally, Sarah asked some lady on the street for directions, and it turns out the hotel had changed its ownership in November and had a new name. Unfortunately, no one told us. After we got settled in, we walked around the city and enjoyed the Christmas decorations, quaint cobblestone alleyways, and stores filled with handcarved wooden chests, jewelry boxes, christmas tree ornaments, etc. After yet another typical Austrian meal, we went to bed early so we could get up and go ski the next day! My parents stayed and did a tour of Salzburg and nearby Mondsee while the rest of us went to a ski resort called Kitzbühel (probably spelled completely wrong), about an hour and a half away. It was kind of a disaster. First of all, Sarah and I were both battling some sort of virus/cold. Secondly, I've only been skiing a few times before and it's been six years since the last time. I'm certainly no expert, but I'm not that bad, either. Or so I thought. The blue slopes (easy slopes) at this place are like the double black diamonds at the places I've been to before (granted, that was in Indiana and this was in the Alps). Even the lift ride took about 10 or 15 minutes just to get to the top of the first slope! After a few nervous breakdowns, my sisters and I had to take a lift back down the mountain so we could ski on the little kid slopes. It was definitely a humbling experience to see 5-year-old children ski way better than us. These kids must be born with skis on their feet. Anyways, it was a fun (but exhausting, both physically and mentally) experience...definitely glad we went, though. I'll have to practice a little bit more somewhere else before I go back to a resort like that. After our day of skiing, we joined my parents back at the hotel for some drinks at the bar and a warm meal. We spent the next day walking around some more in the older part of Salzburg, visited Mozart's birth house and the bizarre museum that was inside, shopped at an outdoor market, got some coffee at a cafe, and then headed off for Munich.