When we got up, the skies were overcast over Salzburg. As we got ready, we had some of the snacks I had purchased from the Spar in Salzburg railway station last night. By the time we left the hotel, there was a light drizzle. I was used to it - the last time I was here five years ago also, I recalled having walked around in a slight drizzle which had never developed into a downpour. Wife had a windcheater/rain jacket on covering her top; however, I didn't have any rain covering on me, the poncho which I had taken with me had turned out to be too flimsy when inaugurated in Brighton a few days back.

It took me a few minutes to orient myself; on my previous stay, I had stayed at a youth hostel which was (is) located much closer to Salzburg railway station as well as Mirabell palace and (Sound of Music) gardens. Now, after I figured out where we were headed, we walked a few minutes until we got to the River Salzach. It was flooded of course, and we crossed over it on the Lovelock bridge (one of which exists in each European city with a river bridge, I suspect!). In hindsight, maybe we should have stayed on this side of the river and gone straight to the Mirabell gardens which might have saved us a few minutes.

After walking on the opposite side of the river for a few minutes - it was windy now and the drizzle had petered out, and though this was my perfect kind of weather, my wife was not really enjoying the cold (maybe about 20 degrees Celsius i.e., 70 degrees F) - we decided to walk back on the next bridge and go to the Mirabell palace gardens.

Though both of us are big Sound of Music fans, I have been the one more interested in checking out the locales where scenes of the movie were filmed. With that in mind and the fact that I had been here previously (though I had not visited the out of town shooting locations or been on any of the touristy tours), we were visiting the Mirabell palace gardens more for the photo ops than as Sound of Music fans.

The gardens were beautiful, of course but not anywhere close in size to either of the palace gardens we had visited in Vienna. However, the density of flowers was definitely higher here because of that very reason - the area was less but most of it had flowering shrubs. We walked around the gardens then headed back out to cross the river. By this time, a slight drizzle had started once more, but not enough to faze us.

Once by the river, we spent some time on one of the bridges admiring nature's fury as tree limbs and other detritus washed past us on the river, presumably from some tree(s) upstream which the river had managed to uproot.

On the opposite side of the river, we walked along the street that was along the building which was Mozart's birthplace. There were some really glitzy stores, whereas there were some that appeared to cater exclusively to tourists. We ventured into one of them and my wife picked up a couple of souvenirs. We also stopped by one of the Spars to get some to go snacks. We then walked towards the Hohensalzburg castle.

When I had visited last time, I was in a real time crunch - I was here just for half a day. As such, I had decided that a visit to the castle would take too much time and so had passed on shelling out the moolah either for the admission ticket or the funicular ride. This time, however, given the weather, we didn't really have any out of town plans. So, we decided to spring for the all access ticket which included, in addition to the funicular ride, complete access to all aspects of the castle including the State Rooms.

There was no wait for the funicular and we reached the castle pretty quickly. We walked around the various parts of the castle, sampling the puppetry area where they were showing some documentary videos, the state rooms which had some ornate walls and furniture (some of which was being actively worked on/refurbished), and the weaponry area. Finally, we went to the highest viewing location that was really a nice vantage point. We could see not only the entire city of Salzburg on either side of the Salzach, but we were also able to see the outskirts of the city which is something that one cannot see from anywhere on the ground level. This area included the Salzburg airport and far flung mountains behind.

By this time, the drizzle had escalate to a steady downpour and my wife decided to head back downstairs. I spent some more time taking photos and videos before I decided to join her as well. We then walked down and across towards the Abbey made famous in the movie but couldn't really remember any of the scenery here.

Finally, the rain not showing signs of letting up, we decided to take our chances and head back to our hotel as it was about three in the afternoon by now. As we walked, we kept getting pelted by the rain. We tried taking shelter a couple of times, but it didn't help much as we got showered as soon as we came out. We knew that once we got back to the hotel and took a good shower, we wouldn't be in a mood to come back out for food (and risk getting wet again).

So, we make one final pit stop at another Spar and helped ourselves to some more To Go snacks for dinner. Now, we had the snacks with us and walked as fast as we could to get to the hotel, water dripping down our faces and head lol. As soon as we got back to the hotel, we hit the shower, the food and then the sack. We watched the news to the best of our ability (not much) to understand German - but they were showing scenes of the fury of the rushing water around the country. In addition, I also watched some athletic championship that was going on - I am still confused it it was taking place in Budapest, Zurich, Paris, or somewhere else.

By this time, it was dark and we were tired, so we called it a day as we had to wake up early for our 8:11 am train towards Prague. It had been a very fun day, in spite of the weather and the drenching we both got.