Manchester Day 1&2- Pemberley! ... and Manchester

One of the sights we were most excited to see and kept waiting for throughout our whole trip is Lyme Park, aka Pemberley in BBC's adaptation of Pride and Prejudice ^.^ We've been wanting to see this gorgeous mansion since forever and I still can't believe we came face-to-face with the mansion today!
We booked a bed & breakfast package at our hotel:

so I filled up on a quite proper breakfast this morning in anticipation of our hike through the English countryside to Lyme Hall (2 poached eggs, 2 hash browns, 2 English ham, and lots of scrambled eggs...). I had asked the receptionist last night how to walk to Lyme Hall and she gave me directions, as I guess the main attraction in this area is the Hall (otherwise, why would you spend 1/2 hour driving up the mountain? hehe). Here's the directions she gave me:

What in the heck is a "stile"??? We had to wikipedia it, otherwise we would completely miss the direction points! A stile is a type of bench that you climb over to get to the other side of the fence:

Another stile:

The hike took 1/2 hour, through gravelly roads and sloping uphills and downhills, wooden gates with latches,


a deer farm and sheep grazing on grass...
and Angel singing (her repertoire of the day included Mary Poppins and Sound of Music~ ALL in British accents!!!!):


But eventually we emerged from the woods to see:

We didn't realize we had approached the Hall from the rear-end, and the only entrance is from the front (haha much like Leopoldskron in Salzburg!), because then we had to circle allllll the way around the huge property to get to the front entrance. But later on, we were glad that the first glimpse of Lyme Hall we got was from the back, as this is the famous scene of Mr. Darcy diving into the lake... my favorite scene in all of Pride and Prejudice :)
The front entrance of Lyme Hall:


This is where Mr. Darcy rushed down the stairs to meet Elizabeth Bennet and her aunt and uncle:

We're really glad that we got there 'early'... we thought we were pretty late in waking up and going to breakfast and all that, but apparently people don't get up until MUCH later around here (plus, it's a bank holiday so people probably want to sleep in). By the time we reluctantly left the Hall, there were so many people entering that any picture we wanted to take had people standing all over in it!
Our walk to and from Lyme Hall was through a deer park, lined with trees:

Apparently this lane is named Lime Avenue... but where are the street signs?

We popped by our hotel to pick up our rental car

and drove to Manchester, where Arndale, the biggest mall in Europe is located. I had driven the car yesterday from Manchester Airport to our hotel, 40 minutes away, and my heart was pumping madly the whole time I was driving! My sense of depth perception was completely thrown off but I'm getting the hang of it today and today was a much more smooth and relaxed journey. I just hope to keep it that way!


The mall isn't the main attraction though. It's the streets surrounding the mall, a pedestrian-only street filled with little stalls, of which we bought fudge:

Out of the many fudge flavors, we chose whiskey, hazelnut, coffee, and chocolate vanilla:

I found out after our fudge sampling that pairing coffee and whiskey together is AWESOME. Initially, I ate the whiskey one and it tasted like a strong dry whiskey, and I did not like it at all. But then I ate some coffee fudge and then another bite of the whiskey, and not only was the whiskey flavor substantially enhanced by the coffee, but now it tasted like a sweet malty whiskey. Yum!
We also bought a Pork & Stilton cheese pie, which was really good but would have been even better had it been hot:


Marks & Spencer, Harvey Nichols, and many top luxury brands are located in this area. Marks & Spencer, which I always thought would be very expensive, turned out to be a Target-like store selling their own brand of clothing, food, and household items for reasonable prices.
We also found Tesco, a supermarket chain that had pork pate for 1 pound! We bought it and ate it for dinner with croissants, and it is absolutely delicious! The pate is made from pork liver and pork meat, so it had an incredibly rich creamy taste to it.
Angel found a chocolate MILK MOUSE!

Salzburg Day 3- Sound of Music Part Deux

~Rain Drops on Roses~

We decided to go to Hohensalzburg Fortress early in the morning so to avoid the tourist crowds. It was drizzling lightly when we left the hotel ;( but we stumbled onto a farmer's market so we cheered right up :). The market is in Universitätsplatz, and one of the stalls is a deli that sells traditional Austrian goodies ^.^ such as this pretzel with SPECK and Austrian smoked cheese.


It's 4.9 euros for this baby but it's twice the size of Angel's hand!:

SPECK is almost like a prosciutto and was all over Italy. We looked at it a bunch of times in the grocery stores but didn't know what it was, and since Italian prosciutto is already so good, we always opted for prosciutto. Today was the first day we tried speck, and it is DAMN GOOD. I'm so mad at myself that we didn't buy speck in Italy!!!
SPECK <-- Angel's contribution to this blog. :P
We had heard from online bloggers that the hike up to Hohensalzburg is really exhausting and long. They approximated a 1/2 hour hike up to the fortress, so we were bracing for a hard hike but thankfully, since it was raining, it was cold so we didn't sweat as much ~__^. It is a really steep hike, with pedestrians sharing the narrow one-lane road with cars, and much of it is cobblestone and gravel, so you really need to make sure you don't stumble. But it was more like a 10 minute hike... we have no idea where the 1/2 hour came from! And this is Jen hiking, too!
Austria's first guarded archway, built in 1642... but not part of the original fortress, which was built in the 11th century:

A view of the fortress from the walk up:

And a view of Salzburg:

The main entrance of the fortress is where the paying and non-paying people get cut-off... so we weren't able to go into the castle, as it costs 10.5 euros per person to go in:


All the hiking made us hungry. We had seen these large donuts (the size of one's hand) all over Salzburg, so we bought one and the owner heated it up for us.

It was soooo yummy on a cold day! Tasted much like a beignet.

Mozartsteg is the bridge that Maria and the children skip along on "their day of fun." Angel skipped too!

We walked by Mozart's main residence, but it is under renovation although you can still go in to see the museum:

Schloss Mirabell has the gardens where Maria and the children sang "Do Re Mi."

They jump up on the steps:

and walk along the horse fountain:

and skip along the vine-covered arch:

and ride a horse-drawn carriage passing the church:

These statues were featured in the backdrop:

These midget statues were used when the kids patted them on the head:

The famous Sound of Music tour:

They have had such illustrious guests on board as Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer and his wife, the 7 kids as grown adults, and the real Maria Von Trapp.
We saw at least 5 wedding parties with brides in full bridal gowns during our visit to the Mirabell gardens. One wedding party had white doves in a box, ready to open and for them to fly out:

After our Sound of Music tour part deux, we were walking back to the Inner City when we found Linzergasse, which I guess is where all the locals shop (as written in a Salzburg local blog). We found a 1 euro store, and scored really pretty scarves for 1 euro each, as well as some headband-scarves for Angel :). We also found the first Spar supermarket that sells Trockenbeerenauslese for a reasonable price! So we had to buy some of those as well.
In the Inner City, there are many souvenir shops that are very very expensive (an ugly magnet costs 4-7 euros at least and keychains are about the same price!). There is a Christmas ornament shop that specializes in the art of eggshell painting and decorating. Angel got so excited when she saw it and said "let's go in!" I had a quick flash in my mind and wanted to say 'no' because I thought we might break something, but she looked so excited so we went in. The eggshells are really gorgeous and they sell hundreds, if not thousands, of different designs:

BUT... guess what? Angel picked one up that she liked, and promptly dropped it... on the floor! It broke and a sales clerk was immediately at our side, saying that since we broke it, we had to pay for it :(. Talk about jinxing it! But she was really nice about the whole thing and said we had to pay 1/2 price for it... which I guess is a discount as they had other eggshells on sale for 1.9 euros and we paid 1.75 euros for a 3.5 euro eggshell. The baby looked ready to cry! (She kept saying, "Where's my mommy? She would an-wei me." ...unfortunately, she had to make do with my yelling at her):


Thankfully, Angel dropped a pretty eggshell and there's only a small portion of the shell missing, so she's going to go back to CA and make it brand new and prettier than before!

Angel's brain hasn't been all here... today she tried to go up a downward escalator!
We bought Topfenstrudel, which is an Austrian pastry with curded cheese stuffed inside (basically) a croissant.

We also bought a braided brioche to pair with a HUNK of marzipan: