The Hills Are Alive

Let’s start at the very beginning—a very good place to start in our day in Salzburg.

After realizing that our night train from Vienna to Venice stopped in Salzburg, we decided the universe was telling us to pay the classic city a visit. We only had the day to explore, so we decided to take a guided tour of all of the special locations from the movie The Sound of Music. The tour involved getting on a big cheesy coach tour bus that had pictures of the movie’s cast on the outside—I’d say we didn’t stick out as tourists at all! The tour turned out to be a great way to see Salzburg.

Like our tour of the Harry Potter studios, we were given some secrets of the movie’s filming. First, we were driven outside of the city to a big beautiful mansion on a lake. We then learned that in the movie, there were two different locations used for the Von Trapp house—one was the actual mansion, the other was just a backyard of a house that never appeared in the movie. Also, the lake that was used was manmade and freezing cold during filming. Because of the temperature, the director only wanted to do one or two takes of the scene where the children fall off of the little row boat. The biggest concern of the scene was for the little actress playing Grettle, because she didn’t know how to swim. So, Maria was supposed to fall into the lake with her and pick her up right away. Unfortunately for Grettle, Maria accidentally fell backwards off the boat and wasn’t there to pick her up—watch for it next time in the movie, Grettle never comes up!

Here we are by the man-made lake. The white mansion was not used as
the Von Trapp house, but the backyard was. 

Next we saw the house from the movie, and other classic places like the gazebo used in the song “Sixteen Going on Seventeen,” and the convent where the Von Trapp family hid from the Nazis. The director decided to use a church for the wedding that was not actually in Salzburg so we were driven to this little town outside the city, were we saw lakes and mountains, the inside of the church, and had an apple struedel snack! The tour ended with a sing-a-long on the bus, and a trip to the Mirabell Gardens where “Do-Re-Mi” was filmed.

Here is the famous gondola where Liesl and Rolfe dance around,
and Maria and the Captain declare their love for each other

This is the little town where the church is located outside of Salzburg

Outside the famous church. We decided to get some
apple strudel and only had about 5 minutes inside!

The children and Maria danced around this fountain during the song
Do-Re-Mi

At the end of the song Do-Re-Mi, the cast jumps up and down these
stairs in Mirabell Gardens, where many scenes were filmed 

After our tour, Grace and I did a Rick Steve’s walking tour around Salzburg and had our last Austrian meal—wiener schnitzel. Thanks to Until Timmy, we had a day full of singing and sunshine in Salzburg. You don’t have to be a die hard Sound of Music fan to appreciate the places we saw, I know I wasn’t before going on the tour. Our tour guide also let us in on an Austrian secret--Mozart was born in Salzburg, so the Austrians are very proud to call him their own, but the truth is that when Mozart was born and growing up in Salzburg, it wasn't part of Austria yet, so it is hard to truly call him an Austrian! 

During our walking tour we rounded a corner and came across this
huge monument. The castle was also always in sight

The buildings were pastel colored! Mozart's childhood home was
just around the corner. 

After dinner and a walk by the river, we made our way back to the train station to kill time before catching our 1:00 AM night train to Venice to begin our two weeks in Italy!