Vienna was the centre of the Austrian empire, and home to the ruling Habspergs for over 600 years until 1918 when the empire was broken up by the allies following the loss of WW1. You could be excused for thinking however that Mozart founded Vienna - his face is everywhere. Touts dressed up a Mozart sell concert tickets on every corner and every second shop sells Mozart balls - little chocolates with his face on them. Funny though, the buskers on the streets play all kinds of music except classical.

Vienna is a nice place to walk around. The streets are pleasant and the buildings fantastic - large, ornate, and old. And no skyscrapers. There are more parks here than you could ever need. The whole city is sized for about 10 million people given its previous status as centre of the empire and currently about 1.5 million live there. No crowds here.

We kept walking past St Stephens Church as it is so imposing and is located right in the middle of the city. Basically in the main shopping street. The coloured glazed tiles on the roof are spectacular.

The royal palace, The Hofburg, is also in the centre of town. It's big, imposing and interesting. A great place to take a sulky ride around the city, but we preferred to walk as it was easy to explore, and duck into interesting looking alleys and churches. Do you believe we've been into more churches in the last few weeks that in the last few decades.

We spent a fair amount of time just sitting in cafes sampling the coffee and vienna pastries - the apple strudel was great, but we left the sacha torte (mit slag - with cream) for those definitely without cholesterol problems. We could simply watch the world go by.

Next to the palace are two "modest" identical museums facing each other across the square. This is one of them and as architecture goes it sits very nicely in the landscape.

Even some of the ordinary buildings have fantastic designs such as this curved and turreted one we found next to a square.

Schonbrun Palace is no ordinary building however. It was referred to as "my little summer place" by the Habsburg Queen who commissioned it. Talk about opulent. Gold leaf everywhere. Timber panelling from Africa. Supersized tapesteries on every wall with such fine needlework that it is said that each square metre took one man one year. Thats right - they were done by men! This palace has 4000 rooms and while tastefully decorated is definitely over the top. As buildings go it is the jewel in Vienna's crown.

After leaving Vienna we went for a short cruise up the Danube, passing many small villages like this with terraced vineyards covering the entire hillsides behind the villages. The area was also becoming more hilly and was starting to look like the Austria we had expected.

As we drove closer to Salzburg we really entered "Sound of Music" territory as the Alps got larger, the grass got greener, the sky got bluer and the scenery more picture book at every turn. And, I know this sounds corny but we had the Sound of Music video playing in the bus!

Salzburg is perhaps most famous as Mozarts birthplace. The 400th anniversary of his birth occurs next year and so his house and many of the statues celebrating him around town are being restored. The town would be a sight to behold with everything polished.

The compact historical town centre again has some wonderful narrow windy streets with a particular feature being the very ornate signs over each shop depicting the business. It is very pleasing on the eye.

Salzburg - named after its main industry over the past centuries - mining and selling salt. Before refrigeration salt was so important for preserving food, it was almost as valuable as gold. Rock salt was mined locally and shipped down the river which runs right through the middle of town, eventually finding its way to the Danube and eventually the Black Sea.

Our weather so far had been fantastic so it was no surprise to wake up the next morning with weather more fitting to September - wet and cold, and definitely befitting our next stop, Adolf Hitler's Eagle Nest just down the road and over the border in Bavaria. It was a 50th birthday present to Hitler from the Nazi party and is basically a small building on top of a mountain for holding meetings. It was however something of an engineering feat to build - first the road had to be built to get near the top, then a tunnel to the centre of the mountain, then a lift to the top. All of this with just a little opulence such as a polished bronze lift and an enormous marble fireplace - chunks of which were souveneired by the allies in 1945. We are told the view is spectacular however we had sleet and 30 metres visability. The postcard looks nice.

We loved this little town just half an hour from Eagles Nest called Berchtesgarten.