Salzburg, Austria

Last weekend we went on our first adventure out of Prague. We decided to go to Austria for our first trip out. We rented a Skoda wagon since it would hold all of us and our stuff. It was a turbo diesel but you would never know it had a turbo. Most of the rentals over here are manual so at least we had that going for us. We also got the optional navigation so we could find our way around. We left in the early afternoon on Saturday. Traffic on the drive down was very bad. The nav had said it would be under 4 hours and it took over 5 to actually get there with all our stops etc. The highways in CZ and Austria were great. The secondary highways were a bit strange. These were wide 2 lane roads with traffic going in both directions. These roads had lots of passing zones with dotted center lines like in the states however there was one difference. People pass down the middle of the road regardless of if traffic is coming the other way. The on coming traffic moves to the side to make some room and the person being passed is supposed to do likewise making an area wide enough for the passing car to fit down the center of the road. This was a bit stressful at first but soon we got used to it.
Once we were in Austria the roads got a bit better and were more controled. Our first stop came in Austria at a McDonalds for lunch. We also walked over into the town center and got an ice cream afterward. Back on the road we soon got onto our first autobahn. It was a nice wide highway with little traffic and all the slower traffic staying to the right. If only we weren't in a Skoda I felt Like I could push faster then the engine could. We did manage to break 100 a couple times on downhills.
We arrived at about 8:30 at night and got unpacked. Pam ran across the street and grabbed some Chinese food take out for us to eat in the room. We all managed to get settled in about 11 and get to sleep. We had little luck with an early start the next day with Alex sleeping past 9am. We managed to check out around noon. We got lunch down town and ate out under an umbrella on the street. The food and beer were very good. We then wandered through the town and across the river toward the castle we took lots of pictures of the large horse fountain in the squre that was in the Sound of music. There was lots going on there. Street musicians, artists and horse drawn carriage rides. We walked all the way up to the gates of the castle but were pretty tired by then and decided to turn back because of an entrance fee and it was getting late. We walked back to our car by way of the large city garden also in the sound of music and took lots of pictures there as well before heading out. We needed to drive on to Vienna.