A trip to Salzburg - 05.03.2003

(Click the thumbnails for the big picture.)

Saturday we decided to head over in the direction of Salzburg to as it was a beautiful day and some friends of ours (namely Messrs Latty & Baxter and Av, Pav & Dillon Sandhu) were around for the weekend. So, having managed to find somewhere to give GP a wash and get her looking her best, we headed off. First stop was Königsee near the town of Berchtesgaden.

Königsee is a beautiful 8km long lake nestled among some spectacular mountains. Apparently it's one of the cleanest lakes in Germany.

For about 13 Euro you can take a boat trip along the lake. The guides explain all the various features along the way.

In the first photo above you can see the mountain range form the shape of a witch lying down on her back. Her head is to the right hand side of the range. See if you can spot her.

Eventually you get to St. Bartoloma which is a stop-off point for the boat. A great little place where you can wander in the forest, head off for a 1-hour hike to the ice-church, eat freshly smoked trout by the lakeside, have a Helles in the beer garden and so on.

Excellent views across the lake.

Access to the lake is strictly controlled in order to preserve it's cleanliness. The tourist boats are all electrically powered and only certain people are allowed out in rowing boats.

Of course at St. Bartoloma you will find the ubiquitous beer garden serving plenty of ice-cold Helles.

Dillon Sandhu, the star of the weekend. He likes beer and he says 'Cheers' and 'Ouch' a lot. And he's got a serious toe fetish. Apparently parents at his kindergarten have to protect their daughters whenever he's around. The lad's starting young!

On the boat on the way back down the lake. Incidentally I had an accident with my camera soon after this photo was taken. It bounced from about 3" onto a concrete floor. Now I don't know an awful lot about the technical aspects of digital cameras, but I do know that they do not bounce very well. It stopped working and gave me card errors whenever I switched it on. Anyway, after a couple of hours of fiddling & swearing I tried the old technique of shaking the hell out of it. Problem solved although the casing has split apart slightly. Definitely getting very close to new camera time!

The Mirabelle gardens in Salzburg look fantastic on a sunny day.

I like the photo in the middle above. Bit of a contrast between woman A and woman B.

Having a few beers in "Vis-A-Vis" with Martyn & Kev.

The 15 pictures above were in a little separate section within the Mirabelle gardens. The first two were guarding the entrance gate and the others were spread around the path. They remind me a lot of characters from a Terry Pratchett novel

And of course a little beer to finish things off. Actually it was a Radler, but don't tell anyone.