Christmas in Salzburg
 

Me and my husband are going to Salzburg for the first time for Christmas . any suggestions on what we can do except going to christmas markets, and visiting the usual places? has anyone gone to Bad Ischl ?

any suggestions on where should we goto eat for Christmas eve and Christmas? we don't want to go to lavish dinners

thanks in advance

We spent Christmas and New Years in Salzburg several years ago. It was wonderful. We stayed at the Hotel Bristol - pricey, but worth it.

As I recall, there is only 1 main market and it closes around noon on Christmas Eve.

But there are lots of other things to do ......tour Mozart's homes as a child and adult, attend a concert in the Mirabell Palace (maybe even one of the "costumed" dinner concerts), take a salt mine tour, take a day ski-trip, attend a marionette performance (not just for kids), and walk throught the old town, enjoying the sights, architecure, old cemetary.....plus a whole host of other things. There are also lots of cool shops - a neat candle shop, a wonderful painted egg shop, and Egyptian shop, etc. Then, there is always the Sound of Music tour, but my boys "vetoed" that one.

As for dinners, most places have formal, pre-set Christmas Eve dinners. If you don't want to do this, I suggest asking your hotel for names of restaurants that are just open for dinner. I don't remember what we did on Christmas night, but a lot of things were closed and I think we ate pizza and at wonderful Italian place called Il Sol.

Almost everything is closed on Dec 25 and 26 - so we did a salt mine tour and skied on those days.

Hope this helps

thanks very much for your help at least i have one answer. was it very cold? as we come from a non-snow country and we don't know what it's like to be in snow and we would love some help on what shoes to take with us.

Glad to be of help.

Yes - it was cold - below freezing temps on many days. I am from the southern US (New Orleans) and I admit that I am a cold-weather wimp. When we went, my kids were used to New Orleans, Houston, and Cairo,Egypt, temperatures. This was quite a change.

I had my ski jacket with me, but I would have been better with a longer (hitting below the knees) coat. My hat and gloves were a necessity. As for shoes, I think I wore my basic rain/snow boots most of the time. But any all-weather above-ankle shoe would be fine. Boots were nice, but not critical.

That being said - there were several days that were cold, but quite fine for walking around.

Salzburg was a fabulous town! Now, we don't go-go-go when we travel. We take our time and try to really enjoy our trips at a leisurely pace. Also, at the time, our kids were 8 and 9 - so we didn't do the nightclub scene. But, we did make them take a nap so we could stay out later on New Year's Eve.

Where do you plan on staying and what dates will you be there?

Our neighbors are also going at Christmas and I am just advising them to watch their timing since we got "shut out" of several things (buying things, mainly) because of store closings. In particular, we wanted to do some shopping at the grocery store (to stock up on things we couldn't get in Cairo) but missed out on the last minute "meat run" because the store was closed.

I hope you have a great time, and be sure to buy a bunch of painted eggs as souvenirs. They are expensive, but fabulous!

thanks once again. we are going on the 21st december and staying at haus lechner which is a private zimmer. we come from a hot island i don't know if you heard of it but MALTA is in the middle of the meditteranean sea. we don't have kids i am 26 and my husband is 29 so we will have time for some clobbing. do you know of any good restaurants we like to try out typical food but not expensive and what should we not miss and thanks once again Grcxx3

We spent last Christmas in Salzburg and loved it. We stayed at the Weisses Kreuz a little family run hotel about a block from the dom in the altstadt. You will need to make reservations for Christmas eve dinner and your hotel should be able to help you there. Our hotel made reservations at a not very spectacular italian restaurant for us. Stock up on snack foods for Christmas day because it will most likely be very quiet then.

The weather last Christmas was unseasonably warm for Salzburg and the ice sculpture at the Christmas market was melting fast but you can't count on that every Christmas.

One thing that might appeal to you is offered by one of the tour companies, it is a horse-drawn sleigh ride up in the mountains with hot gluhwein to follow.

thankyou Aisleseat,i really appreciate and you are making our holiday much easier. as i said we are staying at haus lechner which is very close to the train station (hauptbahnhof) as we are travlling on our own. can you please tell me from where we can book this sleigh ride ? and what about things which we must not miss? are 7 days enought in salzburg? so what did you do on christmas eve and christmas day?

I personally think 7 days would be too long for Salzburg. While we enjoyed the town immensely, its not a very big town and two or three days would be more than enough unless you are planning on skiing or taking some daytrips. The surrounding area (Salzkammergut) and the Berchtesgaden area is gorgeous and are both worth daytrips.

I don't know if it is open for Christmas or not, but Stiftskeller St. Peters was a wonderful restaurant. Its a gorgeous restaurant very near St. Peters, and is very historic. I highly recommend it!

Tracy

Karen, I think Panorama and MTM tours both offer the sleigh ride. Try googling "Salzburg Sleigh Ride" you will get a lot of hits. Where else are you going on this trip? Even with losing Christmas day you may run short of things to do in 7 days. You are a short train ride from Munich and you might look into the Bavaria pass on the train. I would be pretty inexpensive. The salt mine tour is probably to Bertschesgaden and that iss a neat village. Hallstadt in Austria is a great place to visit also.

Karen, I'm not much for snow, let alone cold weather.But I visited Salzburg in the dead of winter and I must say I enjoyed.My friend from Austria was my guide.One day we took the train from Salburg to Bad Gastein,the town smack on top of a huge supply of mineral waters.It's about a 90 minute train ride.We left at 7am.There are several spas.He took me to one out of the city center.It was wonderful.We had lunch in the restaurant in the congress center, right in the middle of town overlooking the whole of the Gastein Valley.It was really scenic, the food was great.We left around 3pm and back in Salzburg in time for cocktails.The spa was not too expensive nor was lunch and the tarin tickets were 15Euros one way Second Class and 26Euros one way First Class.We could have gone to the top of the StubnerKogel where there is a world class ski facility.I told him I would save that for next time.It was a great day.

Karen..oooooops...meant to provide this link for Bad Gastein...www.gastein.com...Ciao

Thanks very much i'm so happy that i have all these responses. We are coming from munich to salzburg and we are staying very close to the train station. We were thinking to visit other christmas markets. Would love also to go to Bad ISchl and Hallstatt and i would love to go to the silent night chapel. has anyone been to these places?

A local custom in the area of Berchtesgaden is the Weinachshutzen (?spelling). These are hardy folks who go out at midnight on Christmas Eve and shoot off of the tops of the nearby peaks....if you can find a local party for this...it probably would be quite fun!!

We went to the Silent Night Chapel on Christmas eve a couple of years ago. We took a bus tour from Salzburg. It was an incredibly cold night (we're from Michigan so pretty used to cold). Our feet nearly froze off! There is a small program at the chapel that night -- in German, of course. There are also little stands selling hot gluhwein (sp?) which helped a bit. It was something that I really wanted to do, but I would have to say that it didn't live up to my nostalgic expectations. It was probably that darn cold weather! Plus the fact that the chapel is a reconstruction -- the original church where "Silent Night" was written is gone. I don't remember how, but somehow it was destroyed.

A better memory for me was Christmas morning in the main cathedral which was beautifully decorated and a choir and orchestra were performing a Bach cantata (or something like that).

Keep in mind that the Christmas market does close before Christmas day and seeing all these little booths being closed and sitting empty is kind of a downer. Of course, what would we expect? These people want to go home to their families for Christmas eve and day, just like we do (if we're home!).

I thought the Silent Night chapel would be small but it wasn't even that big. It's tiny. I suspect about 12 people at a time would fill it up. I guess I am glad I went onece but I'm sure I would not go out of my way to visit there again.

The Christmas tradition in Southern Germany and Austria is for the family celebration of gift giving happens on Christmas eve then they often visit relatives on the 25th and the 26th. You may find a lot of things closed both days, expecially on the 25th since it falls on Sunday this year.

I would like to thank all of you who are giving me all these replies, you are certainly making my homework much easier. thanks once again and more advices are more than welcome. do you know if the trains and buses willstop for christmas? has anyone been to bad ischl and hallstatt? we were thinking of going to other christmas markets apart from that in salzburg, any suggestions?

You will find the biggest Christmas Market in Nuremburg, Munich has several markets in addition to the big one at Marienplatz. We all hope you have great trip and please be sure to take the time to come back and tell us how is came out afterward. Bon Voyage.

thankyou all once againyou hare helping us so much. has anyone used the salzburg card? is it worth it? and what about the buses? are they expensive ? how much?

Beach Boi, if I understand your post, you were able to have spa treatments in Bad Gastein without being a guest at a hotel there. Do you recall the name of the facility? We'll be in Salzburg for New Years and I'm starting to plan day trips. I have two skiers and need alternatives for non-skiers for when they're on the slopes. A spa treatment would please at least one. Thanks for any info you can give. And KarenM26, thanks for starting this thread, I too have gotten very useful info from it.

you are all welcome - yes good question about non-skiers as me and my husband are both non skiers. any suggestions on what we can do as we are planning that on christmas day or boxing day we will go and have some fun any suggestions? and where can we go for a spa Beachboi? iam looking at lonely planet austria and found out thatin badgastein there is the radon treatment, did you try it out?