I had to make a business trip with a top designer colleague, Stu Smith, to Passau in the south of Germany to oversee the printing of a book of photography. Munich was supposedly the nearest airport, so I looked up flights and was horrified to find that British Airways were charging £379 pounds for a return ticket. Simple I though. Try Lufthansa. As the national airline, they were bound to be cheaper. Alas, flights at the same time were going to be over £400. This was all very grating, especially as I could have flown to New York for that much, and had plenty of change.

I then got the map out and saw that Salzburg in Austria was almost equidistant to Passau as Munich was. Low and behold, good old Ryanair flew to Salzburg. And for only £99. What a winner.

The printing went very well. Passau is a pretty, but rather forgotten about town on the River Inn (which is really th Danube) and the River Ilz rivers that seems straddles the German/Austrian border, reminiscent of Prague on a Legoland scale. I should really write about it as well sometime. It is twinned with Dumfries in Scotland which is pretty cool. But getting back to Salzburg. We had of course to fly back from there, and had half a day to kill. It really is a wonderful city. And in time honoured fashion we hit tourist trail and walked around the old town or Altstadt. I think we fitted in everything bar a ride in a horse-drawn carriage and a visit to the locations used in the film The Sound of Music.

First build in 1077, the vast Festung Hohensalzburg castle the overlooks the city is one of the largest medieval castles in Europe and offers a spectacular vantage point of the city lying on the River Salzach, as I hope the photos I took will demonstrate. Luckily for lazy gits like us there is a funicular railway all the way to the entrance. Thought the entrance is rather curiously through an amber superstore. All very European we thought.

Anyway, get yourself to Salzburg. What with it being the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth there, this year is a perfect time to sample the delights of the cream cakes and Sachertorte at the famous Tomaselli Café in the Alter Markt, which has been there since 1705. http://www.tomaselli.at/