Last week-end we stayed in Salzburg at hotel Blaue Gans. It is very centrally located and we like it's arthotel style. When I booked in october they could only offer rooms for EUR 159 per day; on the internet, however, they still had rooms for EUR 119 per day in the Tiscover system. It looks as if the hotels are allocating quotas of rooms to the Austrian hotel reservation system so that they can't offer the rooms themselves. http://www.blauegans.at/

It makes sense to check the different sales channels to get the right room/price/ticket. We found that concert tickets of the same category were sold at different prices depending on the internet by different

booking systems.

We had a delicious lunch menu at the restaurant Pfefferschiff

about 4 miles outside the city center (reservation in advance

recommended). The service was excellent (won a price as best Austrian restaurant service team in 2002) and offered a variety of open wines, which accompanied perfectly every course of the meal. http://www.pfefferschiff.at/index2.htm

The extension of the Christmas market (now covering the whole

Residenz square) has virtually destroyed a decade old institution of advent in Salzburg: the so called Turmblasen. Three teams of brass playing music from the top of three buildings around the Residenz

square: you can't hear them any more through all that noise...

Kind regards, Johannes Haltern am See, Germany