Two weeks ago we looked at a variety of windows from the outside.

Here are views from some views from the inside of various lodgings that we particularly enjoyed.

The Dashiell Hammett Room at Union Square Hotel, San Francisco

Budapest Apartment Window with view of St. Stephen's Square

View of Chicago River and lake from Westin Hotel

View from Le Case Hotel, Le Marche region, Italy

Le Torricelle View, Le Marche region, Italy

Steinerhof Pension, Salzburg

Rome hotel street view from room

View from Adobe Grande Villas, Sedona

East Winds apartment view, St. Lucia

Night view from Warwick Hotel, NYC

These photos are this week’s contribution to Travel Photo Thursday.  You can see travel photos from around the world by going to Budget Traveler’s Sandbox. Next week some windows (and maybe some doors) from Venice, Italy.

The Giveaway prize today goes to one person who comments, subscribes, tweets or mentions us on Google+. It is a copy of Running Away To Home, Jennifer Wilson’s account of her family’s return to her ancestral village in Croatia. I reviewed Running Away to Home here. (You can comment on this post or on an earlier post. Just do it before Friday 3:00 a.m. MST. If you already subscribe by e-mail and want an extra entry as a subscriber, be sure to tell me that in the comments. See complete rules here.)

What is the best view you have ever had from a hotel room?  And by the way, I have not yet posted the BEST view I had from a hotel room. That would have been in Greece, hanging right out over the water on the west coast of the Peloponnese, or perhaps in Switzerland looking across Lake Lucerne, or maybe that one that hung on the cliff in Santorini. Oh dear!! I’ll never decide. Are you more decisive than I am??

Disclaimers: Running Away To Home was provided by the publisher for review. All these photos are my property, and I will appreciate your respect for my copyright.

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Windows form an important frame for many travel pictures. As I look at these, I think I can see where the inside and outside of the windows blend to tell us more about the place.  And surely there is some symbolism looking through a window at the beginning of the year. When I started digging through my files, I found so many window pictures, that this Travel Photo Thursday photo essay of windows from the outside is to be continued next week with views looking out from windows.

Acoma Pueblo window, New Mexico

Urbino Italy

Chapel window at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania

Le Case Hotel, (14th century building) Le Marche region, Italy

Old town cafe, Salzburg, opposite Mozart's childhood apartment

Wupatki Pueblo ruins, Arizona. A door and a window

Mission Window, San Antonio TX

To see more photos from travelers around the world, go to Budget Travelers Sandbox, and click on the names below her photo essay.

Today’s prize to one person who comments, subscribes, tweets or mentions us on Google+ is a copy of  America’s Great Railroad Stations with photographs by Roger Straus III. See the review of the Railroad book here. (You can comment on this post or on an earlier post. Just do it before Friday 3:00 a.m. MST. If you already subscribe by e-mail and want an extra entry as a subscriber, be sure to tell me that in the comments. ) Disclaimer: The book America’s Great Railroad Stations  was provided by the publisher for review, without any expectations on their part. The photos in this post are all my property. Please do not copy without express permission. Thank you.

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Wicked Marrionettes, Salzburg

Although the Salzburg Marionette Theater is anything but scary, you’ll have to admit that the witch from  Hansel and Gretel is a little scary. I recently learned, however, that the way to keep witches away is to put a pile of corn near you doorway.  When a witch flies over corn, she is obliged to stop and count every kernel before she can go on.  And I never thought why I pile corn in a centerpiece for Halloween decor!

I visited the Salzburg Marionette Theater and was fortunate to be invited on a backstage tour when Ken and I toured Austria several years ago. If you thought marionettes were just for kids, you should take a look at the operas presented by this theater.

Salzburg Marionette Theater

The top photo is the property of Vera Marie Badertscher and the bottom photo is used with permission of the Salzburg Marionette Theater.

This look at a Salzburg Marionette, my offering for Travel Photo Thursday, is part of two weeks of mysteries and scary things as we approach Halloween. You can see more Travel Photo Thursday offerings at Budget Travelers Sandbox.

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©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

Hofburg Palace, Vienna

Destination: Vienna

Book: A Death in Vienna (2004) by Daniel Silva

A GUEST POST by Kristin J. Gough

“We don’t talk about that,” I remember my house Frau explaining when I asked her about the Holocaust. I knew enough about the reserved manner of the Viennese not to have asked the question without a reason, or flippantly. The next week I was travelling to Salzburg and visiting the Mauthausen, along the way.

With my American naivete, I had asked my house Frau what she knew about Mauthausen, once one of the largest labor-concentration camps run by the Nazis during World War II. Although she was happy to talk about how to make Wiener Schnitzel, the breaded, fried pieces of veal that are a Viennese namesake; or even discuss the upcoming political election, the Holocaust went without an answer.

Schoenbrunn Palace Great Gallery

In 1995, I was a college student studying in Vienna and living with an Austrian family in the town’s outskirts when the almost conversation took place (I passed Schonbrunn castle, once the imperial summer palace that’s been turned into a tourist hotspot, every day on the way to school). Years later while reading Daniel Silva’s A Death in Vienna (Gabriel Allon Novels) I couldn’t help but recall my own experiences in the country and its capital.

In the contemporary fiction story, readers are introduced (or reintroduced rather since the character appears in several Silva books) to Gabriel Allon, a reluctant Israeli assassin, whose cover is as an Italian art restorer. He returns to Vienna, the site where his wife had been seriously wounded and his young son killed years before by a car bomb, to look into yet another terrorist-linked bombing. This time, the bomb nearly kills an old friend, Eli Lavon, who works to restore funds taken from the Jews during World War II. While investigating Lavon’s near death, Gabriel uncovers that one of the men Lavon had been investigating, Erich Radek, had been involved not only in the Nazi death camps, but also in trying to cover up the existence of those camps. There are many more layers to the story, and Gabriel travels across the globe in his efforts to track Radek.

Although this novel is strictly a thriller, it uses history and current events to drive the action. You can listen to an NPR interview with Daniel Silva here.

Silva, a former producer for CNN who worked in Europe and the Middle East, illuminates the complex feelings of the Viennese towards their Jewish history as the novel unfolds. This is a perspective you wouldn’t get simply striking up a conversation in one of Vienna’s many coffee houses or even if you lived in the city, as I did.

St. Stephens Dome, Vienna

While Gabriel never seems to make it to some of my favorite locations in Vienna, like Karlskirche, the Kunsthistorisches Museum, or even Schonbrunn Palace, the villian Radek is first identified in a chance encounter at a café (how appropriate since cafes are so indicative of life in Vienna). Stephansdome, the gothic cathedral in the center of the city, does get a starring role in a few scenes.

Daniel Silva’s Gabriel Allon is always on the move, so he never seems to get a chance to stop in a Viennese café for coffee and a pastry. But if you’re ever in the city, you should plan on making a stop at the storied pastry shops of Sacher or Demel. Vienna not in your travel plans? Try making Ischl Tartlets (Ischler tortchen) to get a taste of the city, while you’re reading. [UPDATE: You can find the recipe for Ischl Tartlets here.]

Demel's Pastries

Kristen Gough

Kristen J. Gough is always up for an adventure. Usually it involves something in the kitchen. She has written for a variety of publications including Parenting, Parents, KIWI, Relish, MetroParent, Big Apple Parent, BabyZone.com and others.  You can read more about her family’s forays in food at MyKidsEatSquid.com.

THANKS! This is Kristen’s third contribution to A Traveler’s Library and we love the light she sheds on travel literature. (VMB) All pictures here are property of Vera Marie Badertscher. Please ask before copying!

Previous A Traveler’s Library contributions by Kristen J. Gough: Road Trip Family travels in Michigan and in South Dakota. You can also read about Mozart vs. Sound of Music and a romantic palace in Salzburg in earlier entries at A Traveler’s Library.

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Mirabell Castle Cherub, Salzburg

I have been pondering what places my husband and I have visited that were the most romantic.  There are so many. Santorini, Budapest, Florence and Salzburg, for instance.

This little cherub in the Mirabell Palace in Salzburg seems to have a headache as he points the way out the door.  Mirabell was built in 1606 by an un-churchy Archbishop, Prince Archbishop Wolf Dietrich von Raitenau,  who needed an ostentatious home for his mistress. The mistress was named–I am not making this up–Salome. Back in the day, Archbishop’s ruled, which gave Mozart some headaches of his own, but that is another story.

We came across a wedding in the Mirabell Palace.

Mirabel Wedding, Salzburg

As we walked through the Mirabell Palace,  two people, seemingly costumed for The Sound of Music, came in and ascended the marble stairs. They paused for a photo–only the bride looking happy about the whole thing.

Places gain instant romance cred when a bride in flowing white gown floats into view.  We run into them everywhere.  In a courtyard in the Alhambra, in Granada, Spain, we came across a photo shoot with a bride and groom.  No, they weren’t models working for an ad agency. They were not perfect enough for that.

But using the Bridal scale for measuring romanticism, St. Petersburg Russia turns out to be the most romantic place of all.  As we entered Peterhof Palace, with the beautiful series of fountains and bridges, a bridal party preceded us.  They were obviously enjoying their partying in the famous gardens of Peter the Great.

It was a wonderful addition to our experience of Peterhof, which Peter built in imitation of Versailles. The Nazis bombed it to extinction in WWII and the Communist government of Russia spent millions of dollars as they restored every overblown, over gilded, outsized bit of it after the war.

When we returned across the Gulf of Finland to Petersburg, and sat drinking tea at a square overlooking the river, we saw the same wedding party.  Someone told us that in Russia, the wedding party goes off sight seeing after the wedding, still in their wedding garb, while the parents put together the reception. Lovely way to start married life, that…sight seeing.

Now I promise that I will get back to talking about books as soon as I get all this romantic travel out of my head.  Where in the world have you seen weddings?  And have you answered the questions in the previous post about the MOST ROMANTIC……..???

Photos by VMB, all rights reserved.

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Old Town Salzburg Shopping on Getreidegasse in Salzburg Photo by VMB

Book: Mozart, A Cultural Biography by Robert Gutman

Destination: Salzburg

Don’t take the Sound of Music tour.  Don’t tell an Austrian how much you like the Sound of Music. For heavens’ sake, don’t walk down the Getreidegasse humming “Eidelweiss” from The Sound of Music.

I had been warned before I went to Salzburg that Austrians do not like American’s beloved musical because it portrays them as too friendly to the Nazis in World War II.  What others saw as accommodation, the Austrians saw as  survival.  But the lovely lady who guided us on a walking tour around the UNESCO World Heritage Site Old City, blamed it on dissing Austrian music.  “Eidelweiss,” she explained, “is not even an Austrian folk song.” And with that, we went back to exploring the childhood neighborhoods of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Salzburg’s favorite son.

While Mozart did indeed spend his childhood in this city (when he wasn’t on tour impressing crowned heads of Europe with his prodigy), he lit out for Vienna, saying a few nasty things about Salzburg when he was old enough.  Learn all about the boy genius and his pushy dad in Mozart, A Cultural Biography, perhaps the best of dozens of biographies of Salzburg’s pride and joy, and worthy of a place in the traveler’s library.

So after you land at the Mozart airport, visit the Mozart Cafe, munch on some Mozart candy, attend the Mozart Festival or listen to puppets perform Mozart’s operas, but DO NOT take the Sound of Music Tour. Keep your ear on the Baroque music of Mozart.

Travel guides come wrapped in books of biography, too, you know. What biographies have you read that deepened your understanding of a destination?

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