The Scroop's European Holiday: Salzburg

It is a beautiful day today, clear skies and a maximum of 23 degrees is forecast. Our first full day in Salzburg starts with us getting organized and heading into the old town to visit the tourist office for advice. After wandering around yesterday afternoon it was clear to us that Salzburg City itself had very little to offer in the way of things to do (unless you like wandering through museum after museum) so we want to go further out to see some sights. We enter the tourist office and there are two "delightful" ladies there ready to assist us. In fact, they are so delightful I suspect they may be French! We get zero help from these two moles and we are pretty much given brochures and told to read them. We head outside trying to work out what we want to do for the next four days and try and get something from these brochures. We decide we want to do the Bavarian mountains, the salt mines and Eagle's Nest tour which all can be done on one day together as a "super saver" tour. We also want to ask about doing the Sound of Music tour which can be done on another day. We can’t quite work out the pricing but we go back into the tourist centre to book the tour and we get slugged €300 ($430 AUD) for the "super saver" tour! I'm starting to think the lady thought I had said I wanted to buy land in the Bavarian mountains and not just look at them. We hold off on the Sound of music tour for the time being because we don't want to fork out another mortgage payment only to find the first tour was rubbish. We leave the tourist centre feeling like we have just been rogered up the back passage and make our way to the funicular that will take us up to the Salzburg Fortress. The lovely gentleman that we purchase our tickets from (I think he was French too) gives us similar advice to the tourist centre (none) and leaves us to our own devices to find out why we forked out more money in Salzburg. We make our way into the funicular carriage for the ride to the Fortress. The tourists here are wonderful too (also French) as they push and shove their way into you without a sorry or an excuse me. We get to the top and the signage is non-existent so we fumble our way around the castle not sure if there is anything on offer to do. The view up here is amazing though and Salzburg looks stunning from this angle with it being surrounded by mountains. The Fortress tour was a bit of a dud though and we bail deciding not to take the funicular back down the hill but instead walk through the gardens that sit high above Salzburg city which will take us back to the apartment via the Augustiner Brewery. The walk through the gardens takes about 45 minutes and when we get to the brewery its 2:30 and we are starving. We get to the door and.......it's shut! The brewery doesn't open until 3pm. Bloody hell!!! We decide to go to a little pizzeria just next to our apartment about 50m away and.......its shut!!! It closes at 2:30 and doesn't open again until 5:30. Ok, we know there's a little café around the corner so we head there.........they don't sell food........FFFFFFAR OUT! We go back to the apartment where the kids snack a little while we wait for 3pm to come around. When it hits 3pm we make our way up the street to the Augustiner Brewery for something to eat and a drink. The brewery is huge with a massive beer garden, an upstairs food stall type set up and a beer hall. Everyone seems to be in the garden so we go upstairs to get some food before coming back down to find a table in the beer garden. I get myself a beer but they don't sell wine so Kris and the kids have a soft drink. The food was disgusting, served on paper plates with throw away wooden knives and forks (which broke after first use). We are looking around not sure why this place has been given good reviews on Trip advisor because all we can see is a crap beer garden with no views and about 200 fat old Austrians occupying it. To be honest, Salzburg is not really doing it for us. To put it plainly, Salzburg is........ummm..........a SHITHOLE! We find the people here to be rude, the old town is ugly, the food is shite and the only thing it has going for it is the views surrounding the city. Supermarkets resemble 7/11s (and we’ve only found two of them) and are only open until 7:30. Fruit and veggie shops do not exist and the place closes on weekends from 2pm on Saturday (so the owners of our apartment told us). We are really disappointed with Salzburg and it was a place we were so looking forward to. We head back to the apartment which thankfully is awesome and we take a bit of a break. Tomorrow will be a long day, we need to be at the bus pick up point at 8:15 and we won't return until 6pm. We need to get to the supermarket so we can buy some food to take with us on the tour so we head back out. As we pass the pizzeria downstairs we thought we'd stop in and make a reservation for tonight. Kris opens the door and no one is in there except a lady so Kris asks "are you open?" "No we are shut today" she says. Of course, silly us, its Wednesday in a major tourist city, why in the hell would they be open! We keep walking gob smacked by this joint so we take the scenic detour through the Mirabell Gardens (major tourist attraction in Salzburg) and we see a lovely big fountain obviously used as a wishing well type fountain. The reason it was obvious was because there was this bum wading around in his jocks collecting up all the coins, alrighty then. We continue walking and the place is dead, nothing is happening. A lot of restaurants are either shut or virtually empty. At this point Salzburg is making Perth look super exciting! We head home and decide to eat in all the while hoping that tomorrow’s tour will be a good one.