Raining.
Yes, raining. This was our first day of rain, and it rained. All day. 🙂 And we had a Sound of Music tour booked. Ha! “Raindrops on roses” we certainly got!
Never mind, we didn’t see the hills or mountains, but we had a very amusing tour guide who told us a lot of information about Salzburg and the movie. The photos aren’t great due to the weather!
Fans of the movie will recognise this, it’s the back of the palace where the kids and Maria fell into the lake:
The back of the building itself wasn’t used in the movie, just the gardens, lake and steps to the lake. They were going to film the movie inside, but the owners got cold feet about it, they were concerned that some things might get damaged. So Hollywood took pictures etc of everything in there and reproduced it all in a studio instead!
This is driving past the yellow wall where Maria entered the von Trapp family mansion:
“What will this day be like? I wonder…” Wet, would be my guess. 😉 Here is a close up of the entrance, the bus was not allowed to stop there so this was from a distance as we drove by:
“I am 60 going on 70…” 😉 yes, this is THE pavilion. You’re not allowed in it any more due to an 80 year old woman trying to dance and falling and breaking her hip:
This is the palace where the pavilion is located now.
We drove past some beautiful old houses in Salzburg:
The tour guide pointed out the Nonnberg Abbey with the red onion-shaped dome:
Then we went over the hills and saw a few lakes, which must be truly spectacular with the mountains behind them on a nice day:
We reached our destination, a very pretty little town on a lake, called Mondsee – translated Moon Lake.
This small village has the church used in the movie for Maria and Georg’s wedding.
Michael, outside St. Michael’s. 🙂
Inside the church:
We had an hour to wander around Mondsee.
You could even buy hosen (just not leder (leather) ones here):
We stopped in a cafe to sample their apfelstrudel, it was VERY good:
The mountains were just showing through down by the lake:
After this we made our way back to Salzburg. We went back to our accommodation since it was so wet and updated this blog a little! This was the view out our window, it was also a cool 7 degrees out there:
In the evening we got dressed up for a visit to the oldest restaurant in Europe and “an evening with Mozart” in a baroque hall. This was the view while we were waiting to be seated:
We were seated at a table with 4 Americans (traveling together) and a British couple from Manchester:
Between each course of the meal we enjoyed Mozart’s music performed in candlelight, including one of my favourites, Eine Kleine Nacht Musik:
And opera segments from The Magic Flute and Don Giovanni.
The food was very good also, based on historic recipes.
After all that culture, all I can say is, “I hate to go and leave this pretty sight, good night, good night”!