AUSTRIA - DAY 7

This morning we wandered around the old town and discovered the Mirabell Gardens. If you looked closely you could tell it was the fountain Julie Andrews and the Von Trapp children sing around in the Sound of Music. The gardens were beautiful and the girls had fun wandering down the paths surrounded by hedges.

After that we entered Mozarts Wohnhaus (the house Mozart lived in between 1773 and 1780). It was interesting finding out that no one really knows what he looked like. Of the hundreds of paintings and other portraits of him, 99% are fake. The other interesting fact was that Wolfgang Amadeus is not his real name. It was what he was know as, but not the name he was baptised with. It's Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart to be exact. His older sister was also a musical prodigy and they toured together from a very young age.

After lunch we headed off on an excursion to some ice caves high in the mountains. We knew that we would be walking up a lot of stairs once in the cave, but there was no mention of the hike up to the cable car through a tunnel and then once up the cable car, the two kilometres hike winding up the mountain to the cave entrance. I have a feeling that our legs will be screaming tomorrow.

The Giant Ice Caves, Eisriesenwelt, are perhaps the world's largest ice cave system, extending sixty metres into the mountain. Thank goodness we were only going in about one kilometre, especially as we will be going up 700 steps to the top and then descending 700 steps back to the entrance.

We entered the cave. Every fifth person received a gas light to see by and we slowly walked through the door. Immediately we were hit by a freezing cold wind and our breath could be seen even in the half light.

Through the mountain we ventured seeing bizarre ice formations such as ice curtains, ice falls, columns and high domes. These unique sculptures have been creatd over the centuries by nature. It was really quite erie walking by gas light and seeing huge walls of ice, and when the guide extinguished his special light, you could tell that without the gas lights we would be in pitch darkness. You wouldn't want to go off the beaten track. You could get lost and never find your way out.

The tour was awesome. Two hours of wandering through different caves seeing nature in all it's glory.

On the bus trip back we got to see the Hohenwerfen Castle. For the movie buffs, this is the castle used in "Where Eagles Dare", starring Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton. We would have loved to go into both but time was short and we got some great photos of the castle in any case.