Funk Taxi, Bar Flip & mermaid horses

A long overdue Salzburg catch-up...

We woke to sun streaming through our windows and excitedly went to breakfast in the Great Hall. We were not disappointed: breads, jams, yoghurt, cereal, fruit, nuts, chesse, cold meats, sausages, bacon, scrambled eggs and cake! Guests from the wedding trickled in, but we had a table to ourselves. I drank Assam tea and multivitamin juice and devoured an entire plate of eggs on toast, and John was as happy as Larry with all the meat he was now able to have.

We took a stroll around the lake after breakfasting, where we saw dozens of pretty blue dragonflies, lots of geese and a coot family with a couple of ducklings who followed us up the road for a good 10m, as though we were coot pied pipers. I was amused to see other "grown-ups" making goose and duck sounds at the birds, and relieved that it wasn't just us. We walked the circumference of the lake then past wild strawberry-lined hedges towards the Festung Hohensalzburg. Typically, part of the fortress had scaffolding on - that stuff seems to follow us! Regardless, it was a really awesome castle, there were rooms full of weaponary, armour and medals, a Golden Chamber, a gallery of torture devices and a museum called 'Welt der Marionetten' which was fairly freakish. During our walk around the fortress we saw a woman dressed all in Burberry, shoes and all, and learned about Archbishop Leonardus whose coat of arms has a turnip on it. We walked up to the highest point of the fortress, the viewing platform, and giggled as an angry Japanese man was being told off by a tour guide for not smiling in his photos.

We walked to the main part of town through the Fan Zone and saw a poster advertising bands who were due to be playing there later in the week. Our favourite band was Pond Pirates who were apparently an amalgamation of rock, jazz, ska, reggae and polka. We walked past a lovely shop called 'Christmas in Salzburg' and got all excited about it, despite it being 191 days away and passed YET ANOTHER Hotel Bristol, the swankiest we have seen so far. Heading towards the train station we passed Elmo Cafe, a sign saying 'Space Invaders Against Sexism' and a woman on a bike wearing what used to be a floppy straw hat but had been cut into a baseball cap.

After reserving our seats we walked through the city, now almost empty of fans, and saw a baby bluetit, a hoover shop with the "Vampyr Power" hoover in the window and a Hotel Sacher van with a pun on the numberplate. Having had such a nice day we rewarded ourselves with some warm food (more falafel for me!) and wondered why English takeaways don't also wrap the food in foil to keep it warm. We saw two nuns, neither singing, one of whom was dashing somewhere at great speed. We took a shortcut back to the Palace, and on the way saw a horse with an emo hairstyle and a foal, a pond full of flamingoes, some baby goats and piglets, and two ducks with blue beaks (they are called ruddy ducks)! We took a final walk around the Palace grounds and met another family of ducks, this time with ELEVEN tiny ducklings!