The day started at 8 am, when we arrived at the Cawthon's house since they were driving. Arron accidentally left their gate open and their skittish and somewhat new-to-the-family puppy escaped, leading to a 15 minute search around the neighborhood for her. Once she was back and in her kennel for the day, and we stopped at Burger King for some grub, we headed towards Salzburg. Luckily, we only took a few wrong turns on the way there, and none of them were too horrible.
The drive was about 4 hours long, including stops for the vignette you need to put on your car to drive in Austria and bathroom breaks. Once we arrived in Salzburg, we stopped at a gas station to fill up and ask for directions to the market. We figured, how big could Salzburg be? The wonderful, aiming-to-please gas attendant nods and says very excitedly, "Yes, you have a car? Ok, you go straight, and then take a left, then right, then left, then left, then right, then go through a small tunnel, then take a little right, another small tunnel, then left, then right, then left..." You get the idea. We wrote it all down, but figured it was a shot in the dark.
An hour and a half later, including switching drivers twice, and stopping at two more gas stations to ask for directions (neither knew English), I finally pulled out Kendra's brand-spanking-new iPhone 4S to ask Siri for directions. Folks, Siri does NOT have Austrian maps. Bummer! I Googled the Christmas markets and found out it was near the dome in the city--right near the first place we stopped for gas, and we only drove by it, oh, 8 times or so. Apparently the markets were inside the row houses and such. Ahh! So we finally park and walk into the market.
Or what we thought was the market.
There were cute little vendors in side streets, and the main streets had stores such as Swarovsky Crystals and Louis Vuitton, among others. We found a cute place to eat, and ordered. Arron and I both ordered goulash (his was goulash soup), and Kendra and Drew both ordered full meals. Our meals came out in 5 minutes, and Kendra's and Drew's took 45! Another difference between the United States and Europe--they bring out your food when it's ready, no matter if the rest of your table is waiting for theirs. It's not impolite to eat before your friends. But I digress...
We headed out into (what we thought was) the market after dinner and enjoyed the pretty lights...
We wandered for a good while--say, 2 hours, before stumbling upon the real Christmas market. It was quite clear that we just hadn't wandered the right way from the start, and hadn't gone down far enough. But it was a huge square full of vendors and Christmas trees and open-air ice skating and cold.
Did I mention it was cold? It was 34 degrees when we left!
But we meandered through the vendors, bought a few things, and laughed while drinking hot chocolate and hot wine. :)
All in all, it was totally worth the trip. It reminds me of a quote from Six Feet Under: ""Horrible and terrible are two of the most underrated qualities when traveling in a foreign country. Horrible and terrible often lead to fun and adventure." Some people may have said it was a crazy and horrible trip, but company always makes things better. Thanks Kendra and Drew for going with us!
Ciao ciao!
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