Salzburg to Bad Ischl

We were able to squeeze in a visit to Mozart's home before our pick up at 12:30. It was just a few blocks from our hotel so we had saved it until the end. It was quite interesting, not much furniture but some of his instruments. I found it particularly interestimg how his image has been used for marketing and it is estimated that all things Mozart, including chocolates, t-shirts, bags, umbrellas, caps and the list goes on, is worth in the billions.

The Dancing Master's room. (No other pictures inside as Wendy was scolded for taking this one by a staff person)

Our Headwater contacts, Colin and Jill arrived at our hotel at 12:30 to drive us to our first hotel for the next week. Bad Ischl is about an hour from Salzburg on a river not too far from Wolfgangsee (so that would be Wolfgang lake) where we will be hiking to later this week.  This is a historic spa town, frequented by royalty and aristocrats for centuries. 

Our hotel is much higher end than our usual digs. After checking in and seeing our room we went back down to have our meeting with Colin and Jill - we told them we thought we would just stay here for a week. It's a spa hotel, owned by an insurance company who sends teachers who have their insurance policy with them to this hotel for a week of spa treatments. 80% of the guests are Austrians who are having their week at the spa. And then there is us! We learned all this from our waiter this morning who is Slovakian.  He speaks German, Spanish and English as well as his own language and has been to Victoria a number of times and been for tea at the Empress!

The old section you can see is where the conference rooms and restaurants are. Our room is in the adjoining new section to the right. 

I don't think I will have any spa treatments as the price line is a little higher than I am  comfortable with even with the 5€ off coupon the hotel gave each of us. But we are planning on using the pool before we leave this place, it looks wonderful. There are folks walking around in their spa robes and white slippers.

Doesn't this look inviting?

We chatted with the house cleaner too as she was wondering if we were from Victoria Canada or Victoria Australia. She speaks English in her home, German at work but French in her head. So was most excited when Wendy started chatting with her in French. She is now our new best friend.

We have assigned seating for dinner and breakfast. We had to chose our entree when we checked in - a meat, fish or vegetarian dish. There is also "snack " from 2 to 4 so we headed in for that and found a salad buffet, breads, juices, coffee, tea as well as apple cake. So who needs lunch?

Appetizers for dinner last night:

Delicious. (The zucchini cannelloni is on the left.)

Part of the menu, rest was in German. The dessert was tiramisu which we shared and was so delicious it was gone before I could get the camera out. The Germans and Austrians are good at dessert!

The Headwater folks suggested we have a rest day on Thursday and do our 1st day hike the day after because of the weather forecast. Doesn't take much to convince us to hang loose and get ready for Friday's hike in the sunshine instead of rain.