Three of us (parents and teenage child) are planning a trip to Austria in October, and anticipate spending 3 days in Vienna and 2 days in Salzburg with a stop between to visit the Mauthausen Memorial and the memorial at Ebensee.
I am trying to decide how best for us to get from Vienna to the area around Mauthausen and Ebensee and then the next day to Salzburg.
Would you recommend renting a car? And if so, where would you pick it up and return it? Or would you recommend we stick with trains, buses, and/or taxis? Or some combination of train and car?
And where would you suggest spending the night?
We are still very flexible with our itinerary. I imagine this will happen mid-week. For instance, leave Vienna about mid-day on Tuesday and hope to get to Salzburg by supper on Wednesday. The Ebensee memorial is an important stop– my grandfather was a U.S. Army physician who helped establish a hospital once the concentration camp was liberated.
I’m pretty comfortable with the idea of driving– we drove all over Normandy a couple years ago– but did discover it can be tricky to pick up or return a car in the middle of a big city (in that instance a train station in the middle of Paris…live and learn).
Thanks for any suggestions!