Salzburg, Innsbruck and Ikea

Just took a whirlwind trip to Salzburg, birthplace of Mozart, in case you didn't know. Well, not so much whirlwind. Salzburg is only 3 1/2 hours from Trento, so in U.S. terms it's a Sunday drive (I am exaggerating a bit). What a pretty town. We were treated to our first winter snow, on the road there, and decorating the trees. My friend Om from my Italian class invited Scott and I to tag along with her and her husband. She works part time, but six days a week, which sounds like my first job in television. I hope she make more money than I did. Her one and only day off is Monday, and naturally her husband has a Monday - Friday type job. He was able to trade a day and have Monday off, so we left Sunday after she finished work at 12.30pm.We drove up through the Brenner pass into Austria, which is where we first saw the snow. We actually had to drive through rainy snow in Germany. The worst weather was in Germany and by the time we arrived in Salzburg and found our Guesthouse, the day, while not beautiful and sunny, was at least not too cold and wet.The Guesthouse turned out to be a good find. I had searched on the internet for days for a double room for less than 50 Euros with not too much luck. I finally found Haus am Moos, where we had an apartment in an old farmhouse with two bedrooms, a small kitchen, and a gigantic bathroom. They had a great breakfast buffet in the morning the the main house. All the other guests, oddly enough seemed to be from Asia or Australia. Paolo had wanted just to go to the tourist office and find a room, which probably would have been just fine, but might have been a bit difficult since we needed two rooms. We had a great time traveling with Om and Paolo. They seem to like to visit a city the same way Scott and I always manage to. I'm not sure if we are just too cheap to spend money on musuems, but we prefer to wander around the streets. Sometimes we get a bite to eat, but we generally steer clear of musuems, especially ones that cost a lot of money. The great part was that they wanted to go to Ikea since there is one in Salzburg, and the ones in Italy are in Brescia and Padova, which are about equidisant from Trento, and a two hour drive east or west. I think they weren't sure if we would be interested, but of course we wanted to go. I've now been to Ikea in four different countries! We managed to spend less than 25 Euros, which was quite and accomplishment.Salzburg itself is in the midst of several mountains with a lovely river that bisects the town. There are fortresses/castles on the surrounding hills that give you a great view of the town. We actually parked inside the mountain which has tunnels reminiscent of bunkers which funnel you out into the Alt Stadt. The first place we visted was the cemetery, which is inside a chuch yard. It was really lovely and peaceful, and all the more melancholy with the gray, mistly skies. We then walked up to the main fortress overlooking the city, and quite predictably looked over the city. A great view and I'm sure even more spectacular on the clear day when you can see the mountains, which were all shrouded in mist.We ate dinner at a restaurant near the house that was cosy and the food was tasty and well presented. I also had a good pils. It's hard to find a tasty beer in Italy and I usually stick the the house wine, which usually costs less than a coke for a half litre.Monday we toured the city again before heading for Ikea. The Dom is spectacular inside. The vaults and ceilings have some painted decoration, but are mainly carved designs in white stone. It is really impressive. The church was reconstruced in the 1600's, but I'm not sure if the original church, which was built in the 700's, was destroyed. The "new" 1600's plan shifted the footprint about 45 degrees.On our way home we stopped in Innsbruck. Paolo and Om offered to stop as Scott and I had not yet been there. It is also very lovely with winding streets and interestingly decorated buildings. It reminded me a lot of Konstanz in Germany.We spoke almost exclusively in Italian. Everytime I tried to speak German, half the words would come out in Italian. It was quite embarrassing. At least I could still understand the German. Poor Paolo had three people speaking varying levels of Italian, but he was very helpful with our mispronunciations, and was a good instructor.Great trip and two beautiful cities, and oh yeah, the Ikea is nice, but the one is Brescia is bigger.