Europark is 25 minutes out of the centre of the city and is very much like Westfield shopping centre back home. The bus stop for the number 12 bus was a 5 minute walk from our place and comes every 15 minutes so we didn’t have long to wait. You could either buy a 1 hour ticket for 2.50 euro each or a 24 hour bus ticket for 4.50 euro each so that is the one we got. Once we were on the bus we were of course observing the other passengers and noticed when they were getting on they (a) weren’t buying a ticket (b) weren’t scanning any pass or ticket and were just taking a. seat. Perhaps it is an honesty system over here but I would assume many of the passengers would have a yearly pass which is 393 euro for unlimited travel across all of salzburg both trains and buses and students pay 27 euros per month for unlimited travel.

The official website Österreichische Bundesbahnen is where we can book train tickets - www.oebb.at and www.salzburg-verkehr.at is where we can book the bus tickets, there is also a salzburg mobile app for booking single rides, 24 hour weekly or monthly tickets. We are not sure or more to the point not ready to purchase a monthly or yearly pass just yet as at present we have no need for the public transport as everything is available on foot but this may change.

Our bus ride felt very quick and Europark was the last stop. One inside it was Starbucks that Jess immediately gravitated towards to get her cookie cream Frappuccino and also McDonalds to see what new and unusual things they had on the menu including a curry pork burger, a Greek style burger, pastry filled with topping and a few other items we had never seen before. I refused to buy McDonalds though so instead we had prosciutto focaccias for lunch and of course they were delightful.

Generally., we all know Ikea as a carefully choreographed world of inspiration offering furniture, home decor and more and this store was immense.. It was fun to see the Austrian home setups, stylish storage hacks including the couch’s that lift up to store blankets and pillows underneath or the little nooks that had coat racks and cute hutch seats and also see the colour palettes that they use. - think warm beiges, greys, muted greens and creamy whites.

Currently we are unsure of our next home and may be renting an unfurnished apartment so we will need to purchase everything starting with the salt and pepper shakers to the dining table and beds and we found a lot of items that we liked here at Ikea

Once we had enough of browsing and we managed to find our way out of Ikea we jumped on the number 12 bus and went back to our place.