Day 15

Had a good nights sleep and woke to another beautiful day. The hotel we are staying at has breakfast included so I popped down to find what sumptuous options there were. After some scrambled eggs, bacon, baked beans, a waffle with maple syrup and 1 and 1/2 coffees (had 1/2 of Kelly's because it was pretty muck and I couldn't finish it).

Our history walk and sound of music tour started at 11:30am so we thought we would pop out for a decent coffee and found this nice little place in a side street.

We met with the tour guide at 11:30am, a gruff Austrian man but very knowledgable as it turned out and a very good guide, there was only one other person on the walking tour which was nice, small close group so not crowded.

This was the stair case inside one of the main houses, it now is used for weddings and concerts.

We were then taken into the main street of the old city ... commercialism is every where, can you see?

Also the big column running down the mountain is used to feed water from the mountain down into the town.

This entire town is under world heritage so even the big corporates have to "blend in".

This was the birth house of Mozart, he lived here until he was 17.

Here is a bell town that plays 3 times a day, first at 7am to signal the start of the working day, 11am to mark a quick break and 6pm when work finishes. Apparently it has a mechanism attached to it that enables it to play over 100 tunes.

Some more street shots.

We poked our heads in one of the cathedrals and found this.

We then walked through a cemetery.

This dwelling is built into the mountain face.

Water being pumped from under the mountain, feeds a lot of the water use in the town.

The first decorative fountain that was built in the town.

I learnt a little about architectural styles today, the tower on the left is from the Gothic period (15th century), features the pointy tower, the one on the right is from the Baroque period (16th to 17th century) which features many more curves.

And finally, which we couldn't get enough photos of, the fortress.

Sound of music

Before I begin I will say that if you are coming to Salzburg you MUST do this or a similar tour because not only was it a lot of fun it also showed you some amazing sights. I also make no apologies for the number of landscape photos, we just couldn't stop taking pictures, it was stunning.

So the tour started at 2pm, we arrived 10 minutes early and got our seats on the bus, nicely situated up the front as we like them. Once the doors were closed our tour guide Jenny introduced herself (she features a little later), quite a cheeky English girl but great presence and humour.

She introduced the bus driver, Ferdinand and proceeded to tell us that it was his first day but not to worry because he had already done a tour this morning. Among some bland "rules" on the bus, the first was the need to wear a seat belt but the funniest one was the requirement that when the songs from the movie were played that singing was mandatory.

So can anyone guess what this is a picture of?

It is in fact 2 things, when filming they used 2 locations for the vontrap house, this is actually the place were all of the garden and lake scenes where shot BUT the house was used for the back. The reason was that they thought the gardens were much nicer here than the other location but the windows of the other place were better for the front of the house. So this was used in the scene when Maria and the children fall into the water, you will notice that you don't ever see the house.

 This was the tour guide Jenny's first attempt at using our camera, added for fun more than anything.

The lake again.

On the way to this next stop DOE, RA, ME was played and the tour guide, Jenny, said that there were 3 round abouts on the way there and that if the driver didn't think there was enough singing he would go round and round the round abouts until there was. True to his word, on the second round about he proceeded to circle it about 5-6 times, let me tell you, I have not heard a funnier thing than a bus full of people belting out DOE, RA, ME to get off the round about. :)

So the next stop was the famous gazebo that was used in the scene for "I am 16 going on 17" and the scene where the Captain and Maria profess their love for each other BUT only the outside. When the inside was filmed that was actually in a Hollywood studio.

The other interesting thing is it's location, it is the real gazebo but it had to be moved twice. It's original location was on private property and the owners had so many people jumping the fence and belting out the songs that in the end they asked if they could move it over to the other side of the river. The problem was that so many people visited it in its new location that the sound carried over the river and continued to annoy the owners so it was finally moved to a public park where anyone could see it. 300,000 people a year make the pilgrimage. 

Some nice pictures of the public park.

This was the road that Maria runs down when she is on her way to the von Trapp house. You can only just see the yellow wall through the trees on the left, again it's private property so we couldn't go in.

We then drove out into the country side where a lot of the first chopper fly over is filmed at the beginning of the movie.

In the distance you can see a cable car ... used by ...

Paragliders!

This is lake Wolfgang, this is actually where Mozarts name came from as his mother was born here.

This is the church in which the wedding of the Captain and Maria takes place.

Ah, there she is, our tour guide Jenny, can you guess which one? Hint, checkers. :)

This was just a beautiful little town where the church resided.

This is where we had a coffee.

And this is where the part of the film was where the kids were hanging out of the trees when the Captain and the Baroness arrived home from Vienna.

And the last landscape picture for good measure.

The trip home was very pleasant and they also showed a little video by one of the characters giving some more detail about the making of the movie.

Upon return we decided to go back to the hotel and have a sped up viewing of the sound of music so we could pick out all of the locations that we had seen, very interesting.

And as always the night finished with a beautiful meal, and this was my dessert, banana split.

Tomorrow we leave for Munich and are actually a little sad to leave as there is so much more we could have done here given the time.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's adventure, until then.