Four good friends, good red wine, and Mozart

We arrived mid day Monday in Salzburg, and easily walked from the train station to our hotel. We settled in and headed out to explore. Salzburg is Mozart’s birthplace, and a quick walk around town made it very clear, that they take this very seriously. The place of his birth is a museum, the house he lived in is a museum, there is a chocolate confection in his name, and his likeness can be seen everywhere!

We took it easy the first afternoon and evening here, and took a self-guided walking tour of the old town to familiarize ourselves with our surroundings. After inquiring about the best coffee shop in town, we ended up at café Tomaselli.

We have been very confused about what they call coffee here, and also to be honest with the quality of it. Doug and I (the only two coffee drinkers in our group) ended up with something between a Latte and an Americano heaped with whipped cream. Sounds really promising, but in fact, it was quite mediocre. It beat the coffee we had at the hotel’s complimentary coffee and cake, earlier that day, but let’s just say, the coffee has been less that spectacular thus far.

For our evening’s entertainment, we noticed that our hotel had a DVD library. Appropriately the movie “Amadeus” was available. We purchased a bottle of good red wine, sliced up the hearty loaf of bread we brought with us from Vienna, slathered it with butter (that we also carried with us from Vienna) and settled in, to learn about the man behind the museums!

The movie was great, the wine superb. The bread, magnificent. Four good friends enjoying it all together – priceless.