Hi,
We're back from our trip to Munich & Mittenwald in Germany and Salzburg, St. Wolfgang, Melk & Vienna in Austria. I want to extend a big thank you to the people who recommended Mittenwald - a lovely town, and I even found a chapel by chance while hiking to Lautersee that had been my Christmas laptop screensaver last year! We recommend the cable car, violin museum, Mama Lucia Italian restaurant (ate there twice!) and overall hiking or biking in the area.
I'll share that if you're in Munich, participate in a Mike's Bike Tour - great fun! 4 hours of easy biking (1 hour of it in the beer garden), and we learned & saw a lot in a relaxed, fun atmosphere.
I had found info about St. Wolfgang, Austria a few years ago and had it on our short list. We took a bus to St. Gilgen and then a boat to St. Wolfgang. Such a wonderful, relaxing location at Hotel Cortisen am See on the edge of the village - neither of us wanted to leave! The town experiences the day-trippers from Salzburg, but we were out hiking each day and were back for the quiet town in the evening. St. Wolfgang was #1 of our locations.
Melk - we walked up to the Abbey courtyard the evening we arrived but ended up not going through it the next day. Thanks for the recommendations, Emily; we enjoyed the Wachau valley & boat trip, instead.
4 days in Salzburg & 5 days in Vienna - lovely cities and glad to return to both of them 12 years later. Stayed in the center in both towns - lots of walking & enjoying the atmosphere, gardens & sites. We found the Salzburg Card to be an excellent option, seeing more than we originally planned. The U3/CAT was a seamless option to travel to Vienna's airport from our hotel at Stephansplatz.
All of our train connections were smooth. We did talk to some people at hotel breakfasts who had experienced issues traveling the opposite direction by train or bus.