What should I avoid in Salzburg?

Getreidegasse is worth walking through once for the wrought-iron guild signs overhead, but the shops lining it sell Mozart-branded chocolates at €12-15 per box. The same Mirabell-brand boxes sit at Billa and Spar for €4-5. Restaurants on Residenzplatz and Alter Markt with laminated photo menus and multilingual touts outside charge €22-28 for a Wiener Schnitzel that runs €14-16 at Stiftskeller St. Peter or Augustiner Bräustübl in Mülln. The tell is always the same. If someone is waving you in from the sidewalk, the kitchen is not earning its crowd on food alone.

The Sound of Music bus tours range from a decent 4-hour circuit of Leopoldskron Palace, Mondsee basilica, and the Mirabell Gardens gazebo to a slapdash minivan loop that skips half the locations and plays the soundtrack on a crackling speaker. If you want one, book through Panorama Tours, the original operator, not the resellers near Mozartplatz who mark up €15-20. The "Mozart concert" hawkers in 18th-century wigs near Salzburg Cathedral sell tickets to €40-55 palace recitals. These tend to be competent but formulaic, played entirely for tourists who won't return. The Mozarteum Foundation concerts at the Große Universitätsaula cost half and deliver twice the musicianship. Fiaker carriages line up at Residenzplatz, and in July heat the benches smell like warm horse sweat and cracked leather.

The funicular up to Hohensalzburg Fortress backs up to 30-40 minute waits in July and August, when river-cruise day-trippers from Passau flood the Altstadt by 10am. The walk up takes 15-20 minutes on a steep cobblestone path, and you arrive at the same gate with no queue. If your knees can handle it, walk. The fortress itself, built from 1077, is worth the entry, but the audio guide narration is dry and dated. Skip it and read the room placards instead. Salzburg's Altstadt on a Saturday in December during Christkindlmarkt season feels like a packed train car. The Glühwein runs €4-5 per cup and the Lebkuchen is sticky-sweet and warm from the stand, but the crowd density at Domplatz makes it hard to enjoy either.

Summer afternoons bring sudden Alpine thunderstorms that roll over the Untersberg and drop temperatures 10°C in 30 minutes. You'll hear the thunder echoing off the fortress walls before the rain hits. A packable rain jacket earns its luggage space every day from June through September. The Föhn wind, a warm dry current off the northern Alps, triggers headaches in sensitive visitors. Locals call it Föhnkrankheit, and Austrian courts have historically accepted it as a mitigating circumstance. Avoid the "traditional Austrian" restaurants near Mozartsteg that serve reheated Germknödel and call it homemade. The real test is Kasnocken. If it arrives as a grey, gluey lump, leave. At Stieglkeller on Festungsgasse, the Kasnocken comes out golden-brown with crispy edges and the cheese still pulling in warm strings for about €13.