Day 9 - Sound of Music!

August 25

This was a day I'd been waiting for - We went on the Sound of Music Tour!! The only drawback was that it required a somewhat more early wake up call than I would have liked. The Panorama tours picked us up from our hotel in a shuttle and dropped us off outside Mirabell Gardens to join up with the whole group.

our bus!

Our tour was in English, of course, and the tourguide was HILARIOUS, if a little over the top. It turned out that his mother was Austrian and his father was American.

We saw Leopoldskron Schloss - the back of the Von Trapp house,

the Hellbrunn - the site that they have moved the glass gazebo,

Mondsee - the wedding scene,

pretty glacial lakes and alpine terrain - the beginning and ending scenes

and the Mirabell Gardens - the Do Re Mi scenes around "town."

We ended up with the music stuck in our heads for days!

After we got back we rode the elevator up the cliff to the museum of modern art because it has some of the best views of Salzburg.

The view from the Modern Art Museum

We walked from there along trails to the Festung Hohensalzburg - the medieval fortress that presides over Salzburg. It was exceedingly well-preserved and quite impressive. The cost to get into the place made more sense. There were lots of great views and we climbed all over the castle and then rode the funicular (cable car) back down.

The outside wall, inside the walls

We walked to the Festspielhaus (the scene of the music contest) only to find that we'd missed the guided tours.

We wandered further into the old town and found fantastic greek food for dinner. After dinner we hiked up to the Nonneburg Abbey and then back to the hotel to pack up to move on to Munich in the morning.