Still looking back in time, after spending the night near the Neuschwanstein Castle in Füssen, Germany, our next stop was Salzburg, Austria. My mom and I love the Sound of Music movie and we were super excited to see some of the filming locations and relive parts of the movie.

Getting to Salzburg

The drive from Füssen to Salzburg can be less than 3 hours, but we decided to drive through Innsbruck, Austria, which added an extra hour to the drive time. As it turns out, we didn’t actually stop in Innsbruck on this 2011 trip, but decided to have lunch in nearby Hall. In 2018 we would return to Innsbruck for lunch while on our way to Kitzbühel.

Hall, Austria

When looking through our Rick Steves guidebook, we noticed that he recommended a visit to Hall, which is only 10 minutes from Innsbruck. We figured that at a minimum it would be a cute lunch stop. An added bonus was that wouldn’t have to worry about driving the car through a larger city and trying to find parking. After the near parking disaster in Füssen, we were a little more cautious about parking garages. Win-win!

Even though Hall is quite small, its old town is fairly large and definitely worth a walk through.

Hall got its claim to fame from being a salt mining town. While we didn’t do a salt mine tour, there are some available, although reviews seem to indicate that they aren’t necessarily worth the wait or the cost. A better value seems to be the walking tours, although we didn’t do this either.

The beauty of the town and the surrounding mountains were quite nice, although the teenage locals don’t seem to appreciate it much. One group of older girls overheard my mom and me exclaiming about how beautiful things were, and they laughed about us taking pictures of rocks. Seeing the rest of the world can either give you an appreciation for where you live, or make you jealous that you don’t live somewhere else.

The Rest of the Drive

The rest of the drive was quite nice. If you have never seen the alps, you will really appreciate the scenery as it changes and the rugged mountains begin to appear.

Keep reading our travel blog for more adventures in Europe!

Here are some more blog posts from this trip: