The hills are alive with the sound of music in Salzburg. Sorry I couldn’t help myself from having that as the lead in this post. But for real they are—if you go on the Sound of Music tour while you are there that is. We arrived into Salzburg to a cloudy rainy day, but it was the only day we had any issues with weather and it cleared up by mid-afternoon. We checked in to our hostel and waited to be picked up for the tour. We found a food truck next to our hostel and decided that would be lunch. I had the curry sausage and it was probably the best sausage I had the whole trip. It was covered in a ketchupy-curry sauce that was incredible. If you are going to Salzburg let me know and I’ll tell you where this truck was.
The tour started and we went around the city and saw places like the back of the house from the movie. Which due to complications with laws and so on, they only used the patio and lake to film and the house itself was never shown. We saw the pavilion that “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” was sang in; and another little interesting fact was that it was only built for the film. We saw the path that Marie sang down on her way to the house and the trees the kids played in after singing “Do-Re-Mi.” We then left the heart of Salzburg and headed for the hills. In case you were wondering, they did play the Sound of Music soundtrack during parts of the tour.
The real abbey where Maria von Trapp studied to be a nun.
Some of us didn’t enjoy the tour as much as others.
We stopped in Mondsee, which was an adorable tiny town that housed the Mondsee Cathedral that was used to film the wedding scene from the movie. Another great thing about this stop were the strudels. Known for strudels, the oldest strudel recipe in Austria dates back to 1696. We had apple and cheese strudels, some with a cream sauce and some with ice cream. Obviously the cheese strudel was my favorite with the cream sauce. Nice doughy crust on the outside with a warm filming soaked with sauce.
After the tour we explored the Mirabell Gardens, that has the Pegasus fountain, the “Do-Re-Mi” steps and other locations for that song. The weather was finally clearing up and it was absolutely breath taking views of the garden with the Fortress Hohensalzburg in the background. We explored the old town, saw Mozart’s statue and his birth home.
We had without a doubt the weirdest dinner experience that almost had us eating at Japanese/pizza serving restaurant. We got lured in by the all-you-can-eat sign—we’re so American. Don’t worry we ended eating a delicious Italian meal from a restaurant across the street.
The most hilarious fact we learned on the Sound of Music tour was about the end of the movie. When the family is climbing over the mountains in the last scene to flee Austria and the German Nazi’s, they are marching over Untersberg which borders Austria and Germany, so if you haven’t figured it out yet, they would’ve have been hiking directly into Germany. A little Hollywood trick. The real story is that they hopped on a Train down to Italy, no hiking involved.
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Love these pictures!!!
WORST. TOURGUIDE. EVER.