A very good place to start! The beginning of the day after our Sound of Music tour had much nicer weather, so we hit the streets of Salzburg “at the very beginning”, starting in the Mirabell Palace gardens. This was one of the locations where the famous Do-Re-Mi song was filmed.
On these steps in fact.
I don’t know how Mike makes me look so small in photos. Ha! There were rather strange looking unicorns on either side of the steps:
This is one of the fountains, I think the children danced around it:
The gardens really are beautiful!
This is the tunnel that Julie Andrews and the children ran through:
These statues (that SoM film lovers may recognise) are at the entrance:
We will now take a brief break from SoM stuff. Briefly. 😉
The padlock bridge was beautiful in the early morning sun!
Every type of padlock imaginable was on it:
The view along the river was beautiful!
These houses back right onto the cliff face:
We went up the lift to the top of the cliff and had a great view of Salzburg.
We walked along the top of the ridge and through this old wall and fortress.
Here we were about halfway to the large fortress on top of the hill!
And then we were right underneath it:
The way back down was pretty quick.
And by now it was 9.20! Apparently.
Yah! You need, to look Austrian. 😉
This fountain was amusing, the horses have water coming out of both the mouth and nostrils!
Lots of coaches in this square.
But back to the Sound of Music, here’s another filming location:
And this cemetery at St Peter’s was the inspiration for the scenes where the family were hiding behind tombstones in the abbey.
Then we went in search of Nonnberg Abbey itself, where Maria von Trapp was a postulant. We found the steps easily enough, and up we went.
Until we got almost to the top and saw this:
Uh oh! The stairway was completely blocked off. So back down we went. We’d been walking around for 3 hours by this stage, so to go up all those steps for nothing, was not good, you understand. 😉 And, of course, IF we had been able to read German, we would never have gone up in the first place! Presumably this sign tells us that the steps are closed.
We found Salzburg a lot harder work than Italy as many of the local people don’t seem to speak much English. So communicating was harder here and the people didn’t seem as outgoing and friendly as in Italy either. But what was the hardest is that signs and even menus just aren’t translated into English!
But hey, as Mike reminds me, we don’t have signs translated into German in New Zealand. 😉
Here is Mozart’s Bridge:
Also known as the bridge that Maria and the children skipped across!
The shops in Salzburg were interesting:
And since Mozart was born here, there is Mozart everything in the shops! From chocolates:
Through to rubber ducks. Yes, rubber ducks!
This Christmas shop:
Was full of eggs!!! Real eggs that had been decorated, painted by hand, some with decorations glued on, but all very intricate and detailed with ribbons for hanging on your tree. This was just the small selection in the window, photography wasn’t allowed inside. The eggs started at 6 euro each!!!
By now it was almost time to catch our train.
Goodbye Wolfgang!
And hello Germany, Munich to be exact! We picked up our rental car and I had to get used to being a passenger on the right hand side once again, although some of the streets it really didn’t matter if you were driving on the left or right! We drove to this lovely old yellow building, which was our accommodation for the next 2 nights.
Just to make up for staying at two religious guest houses, we were now staying in a boutique hotel very close to Europe’s largest bier garten. Ha!
We walked to the beer garden and had a very nice dinner there and then it was time for bed!
Wow Lynette. what a trip you are having. Loving following your adventures and in particular the art work, especially in the vatican. Thinking of you. Lorna and Tony
Yeah, we’re having a pretty amazing time! Just can’t believe the artwork here, it is everywhere you look, quite literally: on the ceiling, on cupboards, on the floor and of course on walls. Beautiful! 🙂