Showing posts with label Salzburg. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Salzburg. Show all posts
Friday, June 12, 2009
Resumé des vacances en français
On est revenu de Monténégro. Je n'ai pas eu le courage de mettre en français toutes les entrées du blog au fur et à mesure. Voici un résumé :
Paris - Tubingen - Salzburg : La Prius roule vraiment très bien. Elle est confortable après des années de Prévia (qui n'était pas horrible, mais quand même...). En tout cas, il faisait beau et elle roulait si bien, sans avoir besoin de boire, alors au lieu de s'arrêter pour une petite visite à Strasbourg, nous nous sommes retrouvés le soir à Tübingen! On s'était arrêté à Horb, où Paul avait fait ses "classes" pendant son service militaire en '71, mais, à part le fait que c'est toujours une charmante petite ville, il n'y avait pas de quoi s'extasier. Tübingen est charmante, une petite ville universitaire presque entièrement piéton/vélos. Notre GPS nous indiquait un hôtel "Am Schoss" et nous trouvions ça charmant, près du château, mais dans le dédale de rues, il était difficile de nous frayer un chemin "auto". Les allemands sont très friands des asperges et j'ai mangé un menu asperge du début (soupe) jusqu'à la fin (mousse asperges/rhubarbe avec un coulis de framboise). Paul a eu du sanglier avec de la polenta. Nous étions tous les deux très contents. Le lendemain, autobahn vers Munich avec des travaux tout au tour de Munich, pour arriver tôt dans l'après-midi à Salzburg.
Salzburg : une vraie carte postale. Ou le modèle pour Disneyland. Très joli, très baroque. Le décor du film "Le son de la musique". Pour les amateurs de voitures anciennes, nous avons assister à un rallye. Plutôt, il y avait un rallye et où que nous nous promenâmes, nous rencontrions ces voitures. (Un Bescherelle serait le bienvenu, là, je crois.)
Salzburg-Zagreb : un peu d'autobahn, un peu de route de montagne au mois de mai. Les prairies sont toutes fleuries. Sans arrêt en Slovénie, nous sommes arrivés suffisamment tôt pour prendre le tram et nous promener dans la vieille ville quelques heures. Encore un menu asperges!
Zagreb-Dubrovnik : autoroute et route de montagne côtière en Croatie. C'est très joli, mais même le joli devient un peu monotone. Il faut voir cette côte depuis la mer. Les belles petites plages ne semblent accessible que depuis la mer. Sinon, c'est un peu la construction à la Côte d'Azur dans les années 60.
Dubrovnik : Arrivé en fin d'après-midi à Dubrovnik, on s'est laissé guidé par une dame qui nous a loué une chambre en haut de la ville avec une vue magnifique sur la vieille ville. Sauf que la vieille ville est tout blanc et propre avec les toits rouges tous neufs. Mais c'est à voir. Nous y avons passé la soirée et le lendemain matin à faire le tour des remparts, explorer les rues.
Dubrovnik-Herceg Novi : C'est un saut de puce de quelques kilomètres, mais on traverse des frontières. Croatie - Bosnie-Herzégovine - Croatie - Monténégro. L'agence Black Mountain se trouve à la gare routière, facile à trouver. De là, on nous a accompagné à notre appartement à mi-hauteur entre la route du bas et la route du haut. J'ai oublié de dire que tout est à la verticale. Il y a des escaliers entre la mer, la route du bas et la route du haut. Et notre appartement était encore au dernier étage de l'immeuble !
Herceg Novi - petite ballade de découverte. Nous sommes descendus à la mer, direction marina et le bureau principal de l'agence où nous nous sommes présentés à Hayley, l'épouse de Jack. Sa mère était là aussi et elle nous a raccompagné à mi-hauteur, dans la vielle ville, à la place de l'église où se trouve des restaurants et des cafés. Notre première surprise est le prix des repas. A deux, nous avons déjeuné pour environs 20 €. Ensuite, en rentrant chez nous, nous nous sommes arrêtés à un supermarché pour acheter de quoi faire nos petit-déjeuners et légers repas du soir. En tout, environs 11 €.
Le lendemain, nous nous sommes rendu dans le parc de Mt. Lovçen via la baie de Kotor; j'ai grimpé jusqu'au monument du grand poète du pays. Cette baie est magnifique. Alors mercredi, après un café le matin avec Jack (et son fils, Max, 2 ans et demi), nous avons faits une excursion en bateau. Ça a duré toute la journée : la baie, la petite église de Notre Dame de la Rocher au large de Perrast, la ville de Kotor (plus petite que Dubrovnik, mais tout aussi intéressante avec des constructions de toutes les époques depuis la renaissance) et enfin Perrast, une ville presque fantôme du 17è siècle.
Jeudi, une excursion en voiture vers le lac Skadar (Scutari), vers la frontière avec l'Albanie. C'est un paysage très sauvage, très beau. Vendredi, nous sommes restés en ville, à Herceg Novi, à visiter le château (herceg) qui n'est plus très neuf (novi). Il y avait des orages, tellement que Hayley a renoncé à monter déjeuner avec nous. Jack est venu et nous avons pu discuter un peu mieux de ce qu'ils ont déjà accompli et ce qu'ils veulent encore faire. C'est passionnant.
Samedi, il nous est venu l'étrange idée d'aller voir Mostar. On aurait pu faire une petite déviation sur le chemin de retour. Non, on en a fait une excursion de la journée. Il reste encore des traces de balles sur des maisons, mais la plupart des constructions sont soit réparées, soit plus récentes. Le fameux pont est tout neuf. La ville est une grande entreprise touristique : une rue principale qui mène au pont, un peu comme à Mont St. Michel, Lourdes, ou la rue de Steinkerque à Paris. Nous n'avons pas tardé sur place.
Dimanche, excursion au monastère d'Ostrag.
Lundi, promenade à pied dans Herceg Novi, en évitant la pluie.
Le retour : Départ le lendemain sous un déluge. Alors, à propos de ce départ. Notre chère Prius "mange" les cartes d'identité ! Oui ! Arrivé à la frontière, ma carte avait disparu. Alors, il est facile de toujours dire que Ellen perd tout, y compris sa tête. Nous sommes retournés en ville, mais la rue est devenue un torrent et il était dérisoire de penser trouver la carte qui serait tombée par terre. J'avais mon passeport, alors pas de souci pour sortir de Monténégro, mais là, arrivé encore au poste de frontière et c'est la carte de Paul qui avait disparue ! Lui, qui ne perd jamais rien. En cherchant, mon ongle a découvert une fente entre le compartiment où nous avons mis les papiers et la radio, au dessus. Nous sommes convaincus que nos cartes sont parties dans cette fente, mais démonter la voiture serait disproportionné -- et si elles n'y étaient pas....? Nous serions vraiment fous !
Il y a un ferry de Split à Ancone, en Italie, alors plutôt que de continuer sur la route côtière vers Trieste selon notre projet original, nous avons pris ce ferry. Mais nous disposions de quelques heures avant le départ pour découvrir Split.
Nous avions le projet de visiter un peu l'Italie du nord, mais après les prix bas de Monténégro, nous étions d'accord que l'Italie nous semblerait excessivement cher et qu'il serait dommage de finir les vacances avec cette impression. Nous avons pris l'autostrada pour ne le quitter qu'après Turin. Là nous avons pris la route de Mont Cénis. Nous avons eu le temps de nous promener à Chambéry avant le dîner et le lendemain, nous sommes rentrés à la maison.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Towards Montegro
Day one
Vacation. Well, you could say we're always on vacation since Paul retired, but taking the “French” definition of vacation to mean “going away”, then we are now on vacation. I had thought we'd take our time, not necessarily take the autoroute, and get to Strasbourg for the evening. Well, we started out early and skirted Strasbourg completely. Paul decided he'd like to see Horb again. That's where he did his military service. We stopped for a coffee break in Horb, took a little walk around the town center (Paul got some pictures) and decided this was not where we wanted to stop for the night, so we pushed ourselves to Tübingen, a very picturesque university town with a rather large pedestrian center. We got a room at the Am Schloss hotel, aptly named as it is at the entrance to the castle at the top of the hill. We had plenty of time to walk around the town a bit. We stopped for dinner at a sidewalk wienstube, which looked like a little neighborhood restaurant. Everyone else seemed to live in the building on the other side of the street. They all knew each other. I think it was, in fact, one of the finer restaurants of the town. Paul had wild boar and said it was the best thing he'd eaten in a restaurant in a long time. They had a special asparagus menu and I had that. Main dish – asparagus; dessert – asparagus and rhubarb and strawberry mousse. Delicious!
May 21
We woke up to a thunderstorm and left Tübingen in a downpour. The weather cleared up, though, as we headed south on the autobahn. The traffic was heavy and we didn't get to Salzburg until 2, but that gave us enough time to check in and walk about town. We even took the boat tour on the river. Salzburg is definitely not anything like Paris or London and I think we could have perhaps skipped the boat tour. There's not that much on the banks of the river. The town is named for the salt that was mined nearby and the river, which was used to transport the salt, is so named, too. It's a mountain river with a very strong current.
There was an antique automobile race in the town and we could catch glimpses of the cars from the boat and then, as we walked around town, almost every church square was taken up with the cars. We went into the Kollegienkirche and the Ersablei St. Peter (monastery church). Both were sufficiently Baroque to satisfy all our needs for the style, so we did not enter the Dom, the cathedral. One look inside allowed us to see as much as we wanted without taking a step further.
We admired the cars, watched some guys play a giant chess game, listened to a little Mozart played by a strange quartet – the only instrument I could name right off is the accordion. We had dinner not far from the hotel – a typically Austrian dinner. I had Weiner Schnitzel and Paul had boiled beef.
A whole day in Salzburg
We got up and it was raining. After breakfast, though, the rain stopped and we headed down Liner Gasse, the pedestrian street towards the old town, again. Before we got to the end of the street we took the turn to go up the Kapuzinerberg to get a view of the city from high up. It was indeed a beautiful view. The sun was shining on the Alps and the woods were dripping the last of the rain. It's a steep climb up and we came down via the stairs. Salzburg is a lot like Italian cities – churches on plazas that all connect. You just go from one platz to the next. We stopped at the Neue Residenz on the Domplatz. This was the Archbishop's residence. Very little of the original building remains. It was bombed in WWII, as was the cathedral and much of Salzburg. The town was rebuilt as it was, but has a very clean, Disney-like look to it. Anyway, the Neue Residenz is the city museum. They have lots and lots and lots of engravings and paintings of the city as seen from all the interesting angles. There's a bit of the city history, with portraits of all the prince-archbishops who ruled. Here's a little tidbit: Jews were not expelled from Salzburg because they were never allowed to live there, nor even to enter the town. Protestants, however, were expelled.
Apparently it rained while we were in the museum, but it was fine by the time we left. We took the cable car up to the fortress, Festung Hohensalzburg. There you have a great plunging view of the town (it's so small!) and all the churches. You can see the fortifications and the staterooms the prince-archbishops maintained. Just as we decided to go back down into the town for lunch, it started to rain again. We took shelter and waited for the next cable car and by the time we were down the hill, the weather was fine, again. Lucky us. We headed back towards the hotel, had lunch (very long) and it just started to rain again on our way from lunch to the hotel. The downpour of hail hit just as we got to our room, so we could watch from the window. In fact, we had a couple of hail storms, but managed to get out again and visit more of the north bank via Franz-Joseph Strasse. We had dinner near the hotel so we wouldn't have far to run in case we got caught in another storm. I took advantage of asparagus season again, with cream of asparagus soup. Paul had a lovely looking trout. It's early; we're back at the hotel; and ... it's raining!
According to CNN, we were in the heart of a violent storm front that spawned tornadoes further north in Germany and hailstorms all over Austria. More of the same is forecast for tomorrow, but it looked like Slovenia and Croatia were fairly clear. We'll see. This is nothing like the typhoon in Hong Kong last year! That was a day of solid rain with no letup. Here, it's sunny and warm during the breaks.
From Salzburg to Zagreb
It was a fine day, today. Off to an early start, and on to the autobahn to get out of the Salzburg area, we escaped to the side road for a while. The Austrian villages and towns are picture perfect – clichés, exactly. There are fortified castles on the hills overlooking the towns and then the towns build around the church. Clean, neat. There is still a bit of snow in the Alps; we even passed by some people skiing. After a while we got back on the autobahn and did not linger in Slovenia. We are now in Zagreb, where we walked around a bit, but did not feel like actually visiting in detail. Our hotel is not in the center. We took the tram into town but now that we are back at the hotel, I doubt we'll go back. The hotel is in a post-war neighborhood – communist era. The buildings are aging badly, but the cafés are busy and there's lots of activity, so you don't have the feeling of a forsaken neighborhood. The city center is still old, not restored. There are the government buildings – more Victorian-style palaces with baroque icing, like wedding cakes. The smaller side streets still have low buildings in all different colors.
Vacation. Well, you could say we're always on vacation since Paul retired, but taking the “French” definition of vacation to mean “going away”, then we are now on vacation. I had thought we'd take our time, not necessarily take the autoroute, and get to Strasbourg for the evening. Well, we started out early and skirted Strasbourg completely. Paul decided he'd like to see Horb again. That's where he did his military service. We stopped for a coffee break in Horb, took a little walk around the town center (Paul got some pictures) and decided this was not where we wanted to stop for the night, so we pushed ourselves to Tübingen, a very picturesque university town with a rather large pedestrian center. We got a room at the Am Schloss hotel, aptly named as it is at the entrance to the castle at the top of the hill. We had plenty of time to walk around the town a bit. We stopped for dinner at a sidewalk wienstube, which looked like a little neighborhood restaurant. Everyone else seemed to live in the building on the other side of the street. They all knew each other. I think it was, in fact, one of the finer restaurants of the town. Paul had wild boar and said it was the best thing he'd eaten in a restaurant in a long time. They had a special asparagus menu and I had that. Main dish – asparagus; dessert – asparagus and rhubarb and strawberry mousse. Delicious!
May 21
We woke up to a thunderstorm and left Tübingen in a downpour. The weather cleared up, though, as we headed south on the autobahn. The traffic was heavy and we didn't get to Salzburg until 2, but that gave us enough time to check in and walk about town. We even took the boat tour on the river. Salzburg is definitely not anything like Paris or London and I think we could have perhaps skipped the boat tour. There's not that much on the banks of the river. The town is named for the salt that was mined nearby and the river, which was used to transport the salt, is so named, too. It's a mountain river with a very strong current.
There was an antique automobile race in the town and we could catch glimpses of the cars from the boat and then, as we walked around town, almost every church square was taken up with the cars. We went into the Kollegienkirche and the Ersablei St. Peter (monastery church). Both were sufficiently Baroque to satisfy all our needs for the style, so we did not enter the Dom, the cathedral. One look inside allowed us to see as much as we wanted without taking a step further.
We admired the cars, watched some guys play a giant chess game, listened to a little Mozart played by a strange quartet – the only instrument I could name right off is the accordion. We had dinner not far from the hotel – a typically Austrian dinner. I had Weiner Schnitzel and Paul had boiled beef.
A whole day in Salzburg
We got up and it was raining. After breakfast, though, the rain stopped and we headed down Liner Gasse, the pedestrian street towards the old town, again. Before we got to the end of the street we took the turn to go up the Kapuzinerberg to get a view of the city from high up. It was indeed a beautiful view. The sun was shining on the Alps and the woods were dripping the last of the rain. It's a steep climb up and we came down via the stairs. Salzburg is a lot like Italian cities – churches on plazas that all connect. You just go from one platz to the next. We stopped at the Neue Residenz on the Domplatz. This was the Archbishop's residence. Very little of the original building remains. It was bombed in WWII, as was the cathedral and much of Salzburg. The town was rebuilt as it was, but has a very clean, Disney-like look to it. Anyway, the Neue Residenz is the city museum. They have lots and lots and lots of engravings and paintings of the city as seen from all the interesting angles. There's a bit of the city history, with portraits of all the prince-archbishops who ruled. Here's a little tidbit: Jews were not expelled from Salzburg because they were never allowed to live there, nor even to enter the town. Protestants, however, were expelled.
Apparently it rained while we were in the museum, but it was fine by the time we left. We took the cable car up to the fortress, Festung Hohensalzburg. There you have a great plunging view of the town (it's so small!) and all the churches. You can see the fortifications and the staterooms the prince-archbishops maintained. Just as we decided to go back down into the town for lunch, it started to rain again. We took shelter and waited for the next cable car and by the time we were down the hill, the weather was fine, again. Lucky us. We headed back towards the hotel, had lunch (very long) and it just started to rain again on our way from lunch to the hotel. The downpour of hail hit just as we got to our room, so we could watch from the window. In fact, we had a couple of hail storms, but managed to get out again and visit more of the north bank via Franz-Joseph Strasse. We had dinner near the hotel so we wouldn't have far to run in case we got caught in another storm. I took advantage of asparagus season again, with cream of asparagus soup. Paul had a lovely looking trout. It's early; we're back at the hotel; and ... it's raining!
According to CNN, we were in the heart of a violent storm front that spawned tornadoes further north in Germany and hailstorms all over Austria. More of the same is forecast for tomorrow, but it looked like Slovenia and Croatia were fairly clear. We'll see. This is nothing like the typhoon in Hong Kong last year! That was a day of solid rain with no letup. Here, it's sunny and warm during the breaks.
From Salzburg to Zagreb
It was a fine day, today. Off to an early start, and on to the autobahn to get out of the Salzburg area, we escaped to the side road for a while. The Austrian villages and towns are picture perfect – clichés, exactly. There are fortified castles on the hills overlooking the towns and then the towns build around the church. Clean, neat. There is still a bit of snow in the Alps; we even passed by some people skiing. After a while we got back on the autobahn and did not linger in Slovenia. We are now in Zagreb, where we walked around a bit, but did not feel like actually visiting in detail. Our hotel is not in the center. We took the tram into town but now that we are back at the hotel, I doubt we'll go back. The hotel is in a post-war neighborhood – communist era. The buildings are aging badly, but the cafés are busy and there's lots of activity, so you don't have the feeling of a forsaken neighborhood. The city center is still old, not restored. There are the government buildings – more Victorian-style palaces with baroque icing, like wedding cakes. The smaller side streets still have low buildings in all different colors.
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