Leaving Salzburg

July 13, 2015

With the first free weekend already behind us, my time in Europe is already going by too fast. The majority of the group went to Salzburg. A picture doesn't do justice to how beautiful this place was. The taxi ride to our hotel late Friday morning through old town took my breath away. The buildings lining the street had beautiful architecture and I couldn't count the number of statues and cathedrals we passed. Sheer rock cliffs shot straight up right in the middle of the city. We had to pass through a tunnel through one of these to get to the hotel on the other side. And if you could imagine, even that was beautifully designed. Saturday morning started out with paragliding in the mountains. I was the very last person to take off from the mountain and let's just say that my patience was tested. I waited for about 2 hours to take off while the excitement just kept building and building. By the time I took off, the wind was really strong. As soon as the parachute lifted, both my pilot and I were thrown back on the ground on our butts. The bird's eye view of the city and countryside was incredible. Only for a split second did I consider that the only thing keeping me from falling all the way to the ground was a parachute. Then I was having too much fun to worry at all. The view left me speechless and he kept asking if I liked it because I wasn't saying much. After we did the first "rollercoaster" spin I kept asking to do more and more twists and drops. In the afternoon we went to the fortress at the heart of Salzburg and saw the graveyard at St. Peters.

Instead of going on the sound of music tour on Sunday morning, I went canyoning. Sounds really innocent and I thought we'd be doing a lot of hiking with some jumps into water and rock climbing. As I stood at the edge of the cliff and looked down the first waterfall that we would rappel down, I started wondering what I got myself into. As soon as my harness was strapped in, all the nerves disappeared and the entire adventure was thrilling! Getting into the wet suits before we left base camp was probably the most difficult part to be honest. We weren't allowed to say that the water was cold, it was just really "fresh." Now that I have my freedom of speech back though, that water was COLD!! On our way back the taxi driver made a random stop at Hanger 7 for us. The owner of Red Bull built the museum and filled it with all kinds of unique planes and cars. The planes still fly out of the museum because it is connected to the neighboring Salzburg airport. As soon as we left the red bull museum our taxi driver directed our attention to the right and said, "To the right is a medicine factory. They produce the stiegel beer." So incredibly true!