Salzberg

On Wednesday night, I was still undecided about what to do the next day. Which family should I tag along with, I mean, grace with our presence? I narrowed the choices down to two, and in the morning, decided to follow the Jensen Family into Salzberg. They were headed into the city to find the aquarium and Natural History Museum. They wanted to have a 'kid friendly' day. Sounded perfect to me, so off we went. We bought a two day Salzberg pass that enabled us to hit the highlights of the city for one low price (sort of low). We made it to the museum and the first thing we saw was a giant T-Rex. We were off to a good start.


We saw some cool fish next, which were also quite popular with the 10 and under crowd. Jaxon, the eldest in the group at 12 years of age, went through the museum at a surprisingly faster pace than the rest of the kids who wanted to touch and 'ooh' and 'ahh' at everything.



This museum was really big on the whole 'monkey to man' theory. There were pictures of apes evolving into man everywhere and lots of statues of neanderthals. My two youngest right now are really big into identifying with characters in books and movies. Every book we read, one of them has to say, "I'm that girl" while the other says, "I'm that girl" (Yup, Mason insists he is a girl in every printed page or t.v. screen). They are constantly pointing at different girls or women and claiming to be those people. So, when we went into the 'caveman' room, it was kinda funny to hear them say "I'm that girl" to some gross looking neanderthal chick. Ella claimed she was one lady that was dead and buried underground while other cave people were mourning her. Yuck.



There were a few rooms that had fun hands-on things for the kids to do. One room had sound experiments, and another one has things for the kids to balance on, climb on, roll, push, pull, and break apart. Perfect for little ones.





Here are the kids being eaten by a giant shark mouth.

We had to say good bye to the T Rex on the way out.


Next we went to Hellbrunn: beautiful grounds with a palace, fountains and a park. It is a gorgeous area built about 400 years ago by the Archbishop Markus, simply for pleasure. And that is exactly what we found there.
You start off on a tour looking at some beautiful fountains and ponds. Then we were taken into a small amphitheater and some people from the group were asked to come and sit down at the stone table and chairs surrounding it. Colton and his buddy Briggs were quick to run down and find a seat. The tour guide explained a little about this area, then the fun started!

The tour guide turned on the faucet and water squirted from the middle of their seats and all around them. It was a hot afternoon, and you know Colton, he LOVES stuff like this!


So, if you haven't figured this place out, there are some nice statues and ponds surrounded by 'trick' fountains that are turned on randomly by the tour guide whenever he sees a willing, or unwilling victim. Now for this trip we had 11 kids with us, and they were all very willing to get wet. The tour guide willingly obliged, and granted their requests for "More water! More water!"

Pretty soon the kids were figuring things out and hanging back at a place as long as they could so they would get soaked.
They had a BLAST!! (Yup, he got the adults too, all of us)












Here we all are after getting a little (or a lot) wet!

As we were done with the tour, the guide politely explained that the wet kids would probably not enjoy touring the castle, but would have a great time at the nearby park. Was that a polite way of saying our dripping little ones were not welcome in the castle? I think so, but it didn't matter, they were ready for some swinging and sliding by now.







And since we were in Salzberg, we got a little Sound of Music history right by the park. For those of you who don't know the story of the Von Trapp family, they were from Salzberg and their house is close to the park. We drove by it on the way to Hellbrunn. Right at the edge of the park is the famous gazebo from the movie. It was locked otherwise you would have seen a picture of me and my two pregnant friends jumping from bench to bench singing "I am 16 going on 17" (just add about 20 years on to that!)