… with the sound of music, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah (c’mon, you know the tune). When in Salzburg, one must go on a Sound of Music tour of course.

Before leaving home, Lisa had booked a half day Sound of Music tour for us today. A 9am meetup, we had to make sure we were up and about at a reasonable time today, especially since the hotel we are at doesn’t have breakfast included in price (you can opt for the 22€/pp breakfast if you wish). So the 7am alarm, and we were out the door by 7:45. The weather here has turned cloudy and cool now, and today was forecast to be rainy all day, and sure enough it was. We were already good and wet by the time we got to the breakfast cafe, and then another walk through the rain to get to our meetup spot for the tour. Not the greatest conditions for the tour, but we made the best of it. Us and the approximately 80 other people (2 busses)!

It was a four hour tour that took us to (in order): the lake that Maria and the kids fell into from their boat; the mansion that was used as the terrace of the Von Trapp residence; THE gazebo; a view from the bus of the nunnery (still in operation); a view of the mansion the served as the front of their house (different from the one used for terrace); view from the bus of some of the locations in the mountains from the opening credits; and finally a visit to the church that was used for the wedding scenes. And during bus rides, we all sang along to the soundtrack from the movie (I kid you not).

Despite the rain, it was a fun morning. Lisa actually sang more than I did, since despite her not liking the movie, she knows all the words to all the songs. And I found myself surprised (though I really shouldn’t have been) to learn that all of the interior shots from the movie were filmed on a Los Angeles soundstage. For some reason, I assumed they were filmed on location. But that’s the magic of Hollywood I presume. And speaking of Hollywood, most of the people (on our bus at least) were American. Haven’t seen many Americans while on our trip, but they were all here.

After the tour, we headed back to the hotel to drop off a few goodies we had picked up, and then out again for lunch, and another visit into old Salzburg. We had a couple hours, so we did —– a castle tour! Yup, another castle, the huge Hohensalzburg Fortress, which towers over the city of Salzburg. It was fairly busy (despite the rain) but not overly so. We toured the exhibits in the castle museums, as well as the castle grounds. When we were done that, we took a short walk around the castle hill to visit the nunnery we had seen from the bus tour and take a few pictures (of the gates the kids come calling for Maria at, and the driveway where the nuns incapacitated the Nazi cars by removing the distributor caps). Fun!

After that, things were closing up again in Salzburg (shops and attractions seem to close at 5 here) so we had a refreshment, then dinner (Italian again, not quite ready for more schnitzel yet), then back to the hotel. That’s it for today.