Salzburg

Due to all the rain and cold weather in Hallstatt, Paul suggested we leave a day early and spend some time in Salzburg instead.  Our hotel was nice enough to let us skip out early with no penalty, so that's what we did.

While taking Rick Steves' walking tour of Salzburg, Paul got pretty thirsty and tried to drink from a fountain:

We also saw a neat cemetery.  Bills for the graves are sent on a regular basis until someone doesn't pay, and then the body is removed.  What this means is that the graves are kept very nicely decorated with plants because the relatives are still alive and paying for the space.  Graves with a rectangular area for plants exist in the Homewood Cemetery near our house in Pittsburgh, but they are either weeds or pachysandra now - none of them seem to be maintained.  The cemeteries in Europe are much prettier in that regard:

We also checked out some art deco fifties schmuck:

Okay, we didn't actually go inside, but I find the word schmuck amusing.  Apparently, it means jewelry in German.

Paul was intrigued by a sun dial that showed the time and the date... if the vendors hadn't set up shop right on top of it (the sun dial pole is to the left of the dude in the center of the photo, the sun dial markings are on the pavement under the shop and beyond):

Then there was this street with its fancy brass signs and loads of people:

where we stopped for an elderflower liquor (although I think we may have been given pear instead...):

We also toured the Hohensalzburg Fortress:

I got confused and tried to play Caracassonne again:

We topped off the evening with a Mozart Dinner Concert, which entertained as well as fed us:

For one of the props of the evening, the male opera singer borrowed a Rubik's cube from one of the attendees, which was pretty amusing.  All in all, the performers were great.  I would have liked a few more instrumental pieces, and it would have been nice not to have been charged 6 Euro for a bottle of water on top of the 108 Euro we had already paid for the dinner and music.  Pah.  I dislike paying for water in general, but that was probably the most expensive bottle yet.  And it was most likely just tap water poured into a reusable glass bottle.