Life is Fun in Spain: More Salzburg and Munich

January 1, 2015 was our last day in Salzburg.

We decided to visit Hohensalzburg Castle, which is one of the largest medieval castles in Europe and one of the best preserved today. It is situated atop a small hill at a grand altitude of 506 m. :)
We walked up the zig-zag route and took a very steep tram ride down.

Here are a few photos of our walk up.

Here we are within the walls of the castle. We even took a short tour and saw the torture chamber equipped with torture instruments (yikes!)--but actually, they only held prisoners and did not perform torture there.

Then, we climbed the steps to the watch tower with fantastic views Salzburg.

Still within the castle grounds...

We thought this tree was very cool

At dusk we said goodbye to Salzburg and headed for the train to Munich.

Hello again, Munich!
(We were here for Christmas markets at the beginning of December.)

My mom's maiden name is Metzger (a very German name),
and we saw it around Munich occasionally.

In the background is the huge Deutsches science museum.

The museum had spectacular exhibits of historical and current nautical science and transportation.

Anchors...

This is an "ancient" deep sea exploration suit.

Another exhibit was the history and future of automobiles.
Here is a future MAC semi.

An aviation exhibit, too.

We went to dinner for my birthday at a traditional German restaurant called Ratskeller.
It was a huge underground place with a lively German atmosphere
and very good food (even for vegetarians)!