Our SEP Family Adventure – Austrian Paradise 🇦🇹

Salzburg -> Hallstatt -> Vienna

The next country that we visited as a family is Austria! Decided on this place because my family wanted to spend somewhere special for Christmas. Knowing Austria’s Christmas scene is quite special, I decided to bring them there!

Salzburg

It’s however a wrong choice to do so. On 24th December, Christmas Eve, almost EVERY PLACE is closed. Supermarkets, restaurants and even Macdonalds. Which means, no food?!?! Having arrived only in the evening, that was the struggle we had to deal with, we ran around hunting for anywhere that sold food. Ended up paying €3.50 for some ham and cheese sandwich that tasted rather meh, but oh wells.

Spending Christmas Day in Salzburg wasn’t too bad though. We walked around the Christmas Market and indulged in the festive feels! Went up to the Hozensalzburg Fortress for the panoramic view and I would say that you have to go there because you can see the Austrian Alps surrounding Salzburg in the distance. Beautiful! In the fortress itself, there were some small exhibition showing and we went into this puppet-like gallery. Got a really bad shock when I opened a queer-looking wooden. Itchy hands me hahaha, but I drew a crowd to that exhibition subsequently and people started opening it as well.

We then drove to the Mirabell castle where the famous “The Sound of Music” was filmed. Quite an underwhelming garden to be honest, but it was crowded with tourists. My dad also scratched his car the moment he tried and enter the carpark. Be extra careful here! The carpark entrance in austria are so badly made that any medium sized car that leaned too near to the side will strike the curb! It was a heart stopping experience for my family trying to reverse out of the damage UPHILL and the locals are just watching and not helping-.-

We also did some grocery shopping at SPAR and guess what, it is filled with Mozart Chocolates😂 So touristy but it has one whole section filled up by those chocs, be it if they are produced by different suppliers. The other goods are okay and not as cheap as other parts of Europe.

Hallstatt
On day 2, we drove out to Hallstatt, one of the towns surrounded by the alps! Wanling has always asked me to visit the place if I had the chance and indeed after seeing the photos, I knew that is a place in my list as well! Driving in Austria is a beetch because we are not used to manual gear and neither were we used to left hand drive. Being the first driver of the day, I faced countless amount of stress as I drove through the narrow roads and icy highways of the country, at 80km/h. Once, I turned into the wrong road from the highway into a narrow one-way road and i had to make a 15 minutes drive about to get back to the main road. Definitely not helping when the engine keeps stalling!

But lo and behold, we drove past a gem – Wolfgangsee. This lake was half shrouded by mist and it looks like a painting! We pulled over and had the whole lake view to ourselves HAHAHA!

Continuing our journey to Hallstatt, we began to see tour buses piling up beside one another. To our surprise or shock, Hallstatt is rather famous as a tourist attraction and many tour groups will drop by😅 However, that did not break us. We walked around the town towards the photo spot, which my parents called it 仙境, and we played with hungry swans. On our way back, we saw llamas too that Xinyi and my Sis thought were alpacas HAHAHA! Funny max, the llamas even queues up for food!

Leaving Hallstatt, we drove down to Vienna. That is where a lot of events happened!

Vienna

Well first my mum got angry with me for commenting about her and her food oops. Then she refused to speak to me for a good half a day.

Then, she got pickpocketed for about 800 pounds:( kind of skilful though cause my mum kept the envelope two compartments within her bag and she didn’t even take it out at all. So we had to go to the police station abroad to report the loss.

Nonetheless, Vienna was pretty beautiful in terms of the architecture and night scene. Known as the city of music and art, every street is so grand and pretty that it is a really relaxing experience walking down them. Just be careful of your belongings yea.

Apparently, you can watch opera for 4 euros! Xinyi and I watched a ballet(opera wasn’t shown that night) for that price, but we need to stand throughout the show. To go for these standing tickets, queue for the show at the respective venues at the standing queue about 80mins before the show! And bring along a scarf, after you get your tickets, you will be led to the hall to mark your seats. Subsequently, you can go and eat or use the restroom if you like. I would recommend to sit and rest cause its honestly tiring to stand throughout. The ballet? It is really arty and nice but Xinyi and I cannot appreciate it fully. So we gave up after the first intermission and walked around the streets itself. Super amazing city I would say, the public transport systems are super effective as well!