The free day was finally upon us. This day was bittersweet because we had the chance to go off by ourself, but it was also the final day of our trip. 10 of decided to leave Germany for the day and go to Salzburg, Austria. I was especially excited to have the chance to see a different country and explore on our own.

After two train rides we finally arrived. We grabbed a sandwich and wanted to head into town to see what we wanted to do first. We walked through the Marbell Gardens, which were beyond beautiful. We found out later that a scene from the Sound of Music was filmed by the fountain. This was really cool because the Sound of Music is my Mom’s favorite movie, therefore I have seen it numerous times. Since we did not have a detailed plan for the day it got slightly complicated to figure out what to do once we got into town. We saw a tour office and decided to get specific direction to the Fortress Hohensalzburg. Once we bought our tickets we got onto the incline, which very much resembled Pittsburgh’s own incline. We spent a while walking through the fortress, enjoying the view of the Alps and the city of Salzburg.

Once we went back down our group split off depending on what people wanted to do. A couple people went to the Mozart Museum, some when back to the Marbell Gardens and I went shopping with Steph, Alex and Jess. Since we actually had a good amount of time we were able to take our time and explore some familiar stores and some new ones. There was something very different about Austria compared to Germany. They were both interesting and beautiful in there own way, but I would have loved to spend more time in Austria. Our group was exhausted so we decided to head to the Italian restaurant we had all planned to meet at. We arrived and realized it was closed, which it did not say on their website. We improvised and found another Italian restaurant close by. They were so accommodating and gave us a table for 10 outside. We were all so sad that this was our final dinner abroad, but loved how we decided to spend our day. We wanted to get back to the train station with plenty of extra time, so we made our way back and began the first part of our trip home to Augsburg.

This definitely was one of my favorite days from the entire trip. I loved being able to explore a different country and plan out our own day. This day was the perfect final day to our trip.

Highlight of the Day: View from the Fortress Hohensalzburg