Rain!  Rain!  Go away!  Come again another day!  I am SO SICK of rain!  We arrived yesterday to find Untersburg shrouded in fog and a cold drizzle falling on Salzburg.  Our B&B is beautiful, though, so that is a bonus.

Haus Am Moos

Looking out the front door

The front door

The view from our room.  Untersburg in the distance.

Our room

The girls' room

Another view of the girls' room

Looking up at the 3rd floor where we stayed.

After our GPS fiascos, we arrived safely at Haus Am Moos, unpacked, and headed into Salzburg.  It was threatening to rain, but we just couldn't wait around because it was raining.  We made sure we had our umbrellas and jackets and took off.  We parked under the mountain/Monksburg, and entered the old city.

The rain continued to come down, harder and harder until it was steady and we were soaked from our knees down.  It was a cold rain, and we were having a hard time finding a place to get warm.  We finally found a nice cafe and had some strudel and hot chocolate.

I thought this was an interesting way to advertise for McDonald's...

After awhile, Kirk and Kyle headed up to the Hohenfestung.  Kyle wanted to climb up to the top, in the rain, and the girls and I wanted no part of that.  We saw a church in the distance and decided to go in there where we could at least be out of the rain and maybe warm up.  We agreed to meet Kirk and Kyle there in about an hour and a half.

When we reached the church, we saw that it was under renovation.  Locked.  Closed.  No entry.  I was so worn out by then and so cold and I had had such a frustrating experience trying to find our way around earlier that morning, that I just wanted to sit and not have to find my way around any new city.  I thought about going to a different church, but then we would have to get in touch with Kirk, and we had limited cell service, and our phones were off due to our data plan, and it was just too much trouble. The girls and I decided to walk around some more and shop.  So we did, and we were followed around like we were shoplifters in almost every store.  We did have a nice conversation with a clerk in a shoe store and saw a really cool shoe that she let the girls try on, but pretty soon, we were just ready to stop.

I tried to call Kirk to meet us early, but he didn't answer, so we bought some strawberries and went to the church where we found a dry place in a side door under an overhang.  We sat down and ate strawberries and tried to warm up.  I sent Kirk a text to please hurry.

Then the wind started blowing the rain in sideways instead of down, and Emily had the great idea to use the umbrellas to block the wind.  We put the umbrellas up in front of us and it worked for awhile, but we were still cold.  So we moved one of the umbrellas to the top and made a sort of lean-to shelter. It worked pretty well, but we thought how we must look to any passersby.  Kirk still wasn't there, and we started singing "Mr. Blue Sky" by ELO.  Then we sang songs by Straight, No Chaser (Christmas songs, actually).  We thought that people might think we were some of the homeless that we'd seen in other cities, singing for money, so we put our empty strawberry carton out for a joke.  We kept singing all the songs we could think of until Kirk and Kyle showed up.  It has been a long time since I have been so cold and miserable, but I told the girls that when they are 87 years old, and I'm long gone, they will remember singing Christmas songs in the doorway of a church in Salzburg in the cold and the rain and laughing.

After we were all together, we went to a restaurant, built in about 1450, and I had an amazing plate of hot cheese dumplings.  I was loving the warm, creamy feeling as they made their way from my plate to my belly.

Then someone said, "The cheese in those dumplings smells like that sock cheese in Munich."  I couldn't eat any more!

So ended our first day in Salzburg!