Day 11: May 10, 2015 - Happy Mother's Day in Salzburg!

Our night train pulled into Salzburg around 4:00am. We got all our bags off the dreaded night train.

It was 4:00 in the morning on a Sunday so not much was open. We hung out at the train station for a few hours (there was free wifi!).

Around 6:00, we found a few taxis to take us to our hotel. We stayed at the Wolf-Dietrich Hotel, recommended by uncle Matt. Our rooms weren't ready yet but they held onto our luggage for us. We decided to explore the city a bit while we waited. We headed across the river to the old town. The city was dead. I'm not sure if it was because it was Sunday, really early, or because it was Mother's Day or all three but we had the city to ourselves. We walked around for a while, took lots of pictures. It was really cool, we were in the main square when it turned 7:00am so all the bells in all the churches (I believe there are around 21) were ringing at the same time.

After we walked around a bit, we realized that we had walked by a bunch of places that were in The Sound of Music haha so we retraced our steps and took lots of pictures, you know the really touristy, cheesy pictures. We found the I have Confidence horse statue that Maria flicks the water in, we found the garden that she and the kids run through while singing Do Re Mi, the graveyard they hide from the Nazis in, lots of cool places.

They are both schmucks.

Happy Mother's Day Mom!

Al and I performing in front of the statue of Mozart.

We look just like them don't we?

Look familiar anyone?!

We also found the creepiest statue ever! I turned the corner and saw it and freaked out a bit, I thought it was a dementor from Harry Potter. Who has statues like that just hanging around? Mom's impersonation of the statue was hilarious though. This is one of my favorite pictures ever.

We asked the concierge where a good place for breakfast was since we hadn't eaten yet. She directed us to this weird hipster place with tiny portions of food and salami disguised as bacon. We were not a fan. Al ordered a waffle and it ended up being about a square inch big. Nope, not impressed. They did have cute hat cozies for the eggs though, because that's needed... 

Al and I taking a little cat nap while waiting for our hotel room to be ready.

Our rooms were finally ready around 9:00 so we went back to the hotel and crashed for a few hours. Our room was really nice. We slept and showered then went back out on the town, feeling much better after resting for a while. We were still hungry after our small breakfast so we found a little Italian place down the street from our hotel that had some really yummy pasta. We then went exploring again. We found the coolest playground ever! It definitely wouldn't have passed any regulations or anything in America but it was so much fun!

We finished up the night with a walk in the gardens and down by the river. I love the feeling of this little town. The people are very nice and it's just a quaint little place.

When we were headed back to the hotel when we found this keeper. Are the women of Salzburg really attracted to this? I mean, the pasty whiteness and bad teeth... that's rough. I suggested Al and I sneak out later and hit up Ladies Night. 

We also passed a father and son racing balls down this little stream. It was super cute! 

We grabbed some gelato on the way back to the hotel. Have we mentioned we like gelato? Since it was Mother's Day, we got to Skype with CJ and Wes, my brothers that are serving LDS missions. It was so cool how all of us were in different countries - we were in Austria, CJ was in Mexico, and Wes in Honduras. We were very grateful for modern technology. We didn't get to talk to them very long and the connection wasn't very good but I'm so glad we got to talk to them and see their smiling faces. 

Happy Mother's Day! 

Day 10: May 9, 2015 - A Gondola Ride, Shopping, and the Dreaded Night Train

We got up pretty early to have breakfast before we had to be out of our rooms at 9:00am. Once we got off the ship with all our luggage, we found a bus that would take us to the train station in Venice. We had to lug all of our luggage across this steep bridge. These guys with little dollies kept coming up to us asking if we wanted help. Mom was a little freaked out giving them our luggage because she thought they would just take off with it haha we finally made it across and into the train station. Our night train didn’t leave until 9:00 that night so we found a place to store our luggage at the train station, bought our train tickets, and went out exploring the city. 

Dad bought a selfie stick! There are guys everywhere selling them so Dad bought a red one haha he kept getting nervous that his phone would fall out of it into the water though. 

The first selfie with the selfie stick.

Me taking a picture of the first selfie with the selfie stick. 

We found a guy to take us on a gondola ride. He had the striped shirt on and the little hat haha Al and I didn’t have any spaghetti to share on our romantic gondola ride but it was still super cool. We had like a 45 minute ride around the city, out into the main part and throughout all the little alley ways. 

Al and I had a very romantic gondola ride. We were missing our shared bowl of spaghetti. Next time, I guess. 

We then started walking and shopping. We did a lot of shopping, like a ridiculous amount haha we bought Italia jackets, including one for baby girl! And we found a Disney store which is a must for the Kemp family. We stopped for gelato several times on our way throughout the city - it was our goal to get gelato 10 times that day. We all got masks and Dad and Cory found some cool quills and notebooks and stuff. WE LOVE VENICE!

We found a place to eat inside where it was a little cooler. We were the only people there. The ceiling was covered in bras (???) and the walls had records and old concert posters and stuff on it, it was a cool and interesting place. We got pizza (obviously) and water. Dad had a hard time with the no ice thing haha and the gas/no gas water (gas means club soda, no gas means just regular water). 

We did some more shopping then headed over to the main square. Mom and Jess hung out on the steps with all of our shopping bags while Dad, Cory, Al, and I ventured into St. Mark’s Basilica. It was under construction so you could only go into parts of it but it was super cool and pretty. 

We made our way back to the train station. We hung out under a bridge for a while. Cory and I were laughing at the boats that drove by that said, “Stops where emotion start” - obviously they used google translate and just decided to trust it blindly and put it on their boats rather than getting a second opinion on the translation haha Mom, Dad, and Jess ventured out to find some snacks and water for the train ride. Al and I played some cards on the disgusting Venice ground. We laughed at pigeons while Cory commented, “I love mocking lesser intelligence.” When Mom, Dad, and Jess returned, we started to head back to the train station which was a good thing because the weather started to get bad - it started to rain when we were in the train station. We got our bags from the storage place and just hung out. We found some wifi and some chocolate - all you need while hanging out in a train station in Venice. 

I have the coolest dad ever. 

Our night train pulled in around 8:15. We found our car and loaded all of our luggage and crap into it. The car was supposed to sleep six people. However, with all of the crap we brought with us and acquired in Venice, there was no way we were going to sleep all six of us. The worker guy on the train came by and offered us another car so we could all sleep which was super nice of him. We spent the first few hours together. 

We were able to get a few hours of sleep. It was at least better than my last night train experience - I was able to lay down and not have the stupid latter smacking my head every two minutes.