January 29 - Last Day in Salzburg

Our last "real" day of vacation arrived much too quickly. Around 9 AM we drove to Franz-Josef Strasse and had breakfast at Fingerlos Cafe. Fingerlos is famous in Salzburg for catering to "society", much as Dallmyer is in Munich. Ron and I enjoy going there in pleasant weather to sit outside and "people-watch". The menu is very extensive and quite varied for European breakfast. Of course, this time of year we were inside the modern cafe. They have a large glass display counter with a wide variety of cakes, tortes, candies and other bakery items. The building was formerly the Winkler Hotel and now houses a senior citizen residence above the cafe. I commented that would be an ideal place for me!

Outside Fingerlos Cafe

Part of Pat's "Extended Breakfast" choice

Mike's breakfast with 3 kinds of sausage

Ron's dessert - carrot cake

After breakfast we returned briefly to our apartment. We then dropped Pat and Mike off (with their unbrellas) to spend their last day in Europe in the Aldt Stadt, a place of many special memories. Ron and I had planned to go to Gmunden on Traunsee, but it was a gray and rainy day, and we decided we didn't want to go that far. We ended up in the small suburb of Elixhausen at the Romantik Hotel Gmachl, which we had visited on our last trip. Hotels belonging to the Romantik Hotel group always seems to have the cozy, gemutlich atmosphere we enjoy. This was no exception. Beautiful dining and public rooms.

At our table

After lunch we went to the Forum shopping center adjacent to the Bahnhof (train station) to pick up some grocery items we wanted to take home, and get an "International Herald".

That afternoon we worked on reorganizing and repacking the luggage.

Around 6:30 PM the four of us set out for our final dinner at the Friesacher in Anif, as previously mentioned - one of our favorite places. Despite the hotel being fully booked (our wait-list never cleared), the place was quiet and several of the fireplaces were not ablaze. We finally found a place other than the bar (smoking) where we could sit by a fire. 

We then walked to the adjacent Heuriger, owned by a member of the same family. This is where you choose your own food items from a counter. You can specify how many of each item you want - which is neat for "sampling" - something like the Austrian version of "tapas". For example, I had one shrimp, one artichoke heart, two buffalo mozzarella cheese balls, and a piece of fried chicken. Everything was good. And there were so many more choices.

Mary's plate

We returned safely to our little apartments, and knew we had to get up early, which was not difficult to do with no rolladen (a kind of metal blinds that most buildings have outside) on our windows (so light came in) and the little workshop across the way coming to life early in the morning.