We spent one night in Passau before boarding our Danube river cruise…read more The town was quaint and easy to navigate. The Old Town has several churches, medieval buildings, shops and restaurants worth visiting. Their pedestrian area makes it easy to stroll and enjoy the city.

What a quaint little town. So much to see, it's amazing…read more Most famously the St. Stephan Dome. A spectacular cathedral. Much smaller but also very picturesque and interesting is the St. Paul church. There are beautiful historic buildings all over, including a wonderful garden next to the tunnel adjacent to St. Pauls. Find cool little cafes and shops along the narrow cobblestone street. Careful though, traffic flows a lot faster than you would expect here. There is both old and new art in every corner it seems.

Baumkronenweg is one of the strangest attractions that I have ever been to, which is probably why I…read moreenjoyed it so much. This isn't a place you just stumble upon. You have to drive quite a ways to get to this wooded area of Austria. You definitely get the impression that they don't get many English-speaking tourists here. None of the signage has English on it but the friendly staff was very helpful. After you go through the main entrance they'll snap a quick picture of you. You'll then encounter a boardwalk where you climb stairs up. Then you climb some more stairs up. Repeat until you're pretty high up in the trees. There's a large wooden observation tower near the beginning that you can choose to climb up if you want. I hate heights so I went up long enough to take a few pics and then "noped" my way down as fast as I could. The views are quite stunning in several places and it is a nice relaxing walk through the forest on the boardwalks. In the middle of the forest they have a restaurant and what I think was a hotel with five rooms elevated high above the ground. We stopped here and had a treat of a glass containing milk, a scoop of ice cream, and a little cookie! As you continue on there's a playground area with swings, rope courses, and other obstacles. Past this part we actually got really confused. There was what was obviously a one-way gate to exit, but it just spit you out into the woods. The signs weren't in English so we weren't sure what to do. We decided to follow the road (instead of a path we saw). After a little bit of "I hope this is right" walking we finally spotted a little shack in the distance. When we go to it we found it was a souvenir stand where they offer to sell you the picture they took of you at the entrance! Guess we took the correct path! This was a fun afternoon in an offbeat place.

This is one of those charming European squares that you tend to find, well, pretty much everywhere,…read moreor at least in the cities and towns that tend to be older than say 200 years. The place is quite spacious, and the view of the fortress is also pretty cool. Okay, it doesn't have the pull that some places happen to have, and Salzburg isn't one of the biggest cities, but this square was till rather nice.

For those of us who can't differentiate between the plazas in Old City Salzburg, this is the one…read morewith a great fountain in it. Really sprawling with just a couple of cafe's on its perimeter facing an entrance into cathedral.

All set against a mountain. The Abbey, Church and Catacombs are well worth about and hour and a…read morehalf of your time. Steep steps up to the catacombs

This Abby is breathtaking. It was founded in around 700 making it the oldest in the German-speaking…read moreworld.The abbey features the church of course, a unbelievably beautiful old cemetery, a old bakery that still has a working mill and catacombs. Everything is free to visit except for the catacombs which cost not very much at all. The catacombs will only take you about 15 minutes to explore but there are very very steep stairs that you need to climb to get to them. Everything else you could explore in less than an hour. Does Abby is right next to the Funicular taking you up to the fortress so it's a good idea to tour both of these at the same time.

The honest draw here is the Sound of Music gazebo, and it does deliver, though it's worth knowing…read moreupfront that the pavilion was actually relocated to make it easier for the public to visit. So it's not technically where they filmed the scene, but it's the real gazebo on very beautiful grounds, and standing in front of it in Salzburg still feels cool The palace and park themselves are a bigger win: a 17th-century pleasure palace with enormous, well-maintained grounds that are genuinely gorgeous to wander on a good day. The trick fountains are a legitimate reason to come, although they were off on the day of our visit which was a bummer. If you're in Salzburg and have any interest at all in the film or just want an afternoon outside the old town, this is worth the trip.

Since we had the 24 hour Salzburg Visitor card, we stopped at the Hellbrunn palace on the way back…read morefrom the Untersberg cable car experience. I wanted to come here since the Gazebo from the Sound of Music (where Liesl sings 16 going on 17) is here. The tour of the palace highlights the "Trick Fountains" which are really interesting, fun and surprisingly artistic. As you walk around these fountains, there are times when they suddenly spew water, getting unsuspected guests a bit wet.... The palace was built in 1613-19 and named for the "clear spring" that supplied it. Hellbrunn was only meant for use as a day residence in summer, as the Archbishop usually returned to Salzburg in the evening; therefore, there is no bedrooms in Hellbrunn. The place has plenty of beautifully landscaped green spaces and it is just a marvel of what hydraulics can do. There's a cute cafe and a souvenir shop on the grounds.

Beautiful church, the decorations, frescos and statues are really impressive…read more This large building with its white towers and blue-green domes is the crucial baroque church north of the Alps. The ornately interior holds an exceptional treasure: the biggest cathedral organ in the world with 17,974 pipes and 233 registers...currently being renovated, so many of the pipes are not on site....The noon concert was not great due to the lack of organ pipes....which are expected to be ready to play again in 2027. The St. Stephen's Cathedral is the mother church of the Danube's eastern region. The magnificent cathedral with lots of Baroque influence is situated at the highest point of Passau's old town, the Altstadt.

As so many others I was in town to join a river cruise and thought I should go and see the world's…read morelargest pipe organ. Imagine my disappointment when I found out that it is under construction currently. Half of the Dom is blocked by scaffolding. I mean it's still very pretty with lots of things to admire, but I won't be back here again and so I did miss out on the organ. Still it is worth a look-see. It is quite an impressive church.

While the town of Ebensee has a nice museum commemorating the Ebensee Concentration Camp…read more(Konzentrationslager Ebensee or KZ Ebensee), this is the actual site. After the war, the area was rezoned for a housing development and much of the camp is now family homes and gardens. However, some of the site remains along with a memorial wall. The museum in town is also on yelp and called "Zeitgeschichte Museum und KZ-Gedenkstätte Ebensee" and you should start there and then come visit the actual site. Its web site is http://www.memorial-ebensee.at/ There is no website for the site, but you can get lots of great info on wikipedia or at: http://en.tracesofwar.com/article/1287/Memorial-and-Cemetery-Concentration-Camp-Ebensee.htm There is not much parking or even great signage to get to the camp location, but it is worth a visit. There are also "Tunnels" you can visit that were dug by this camp's prisioners during the war to hide underground the V2 rocket production. The museum can tell you more.