The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Music!

I woke up early, excited about the day. We had a lovely breakfast awaiting us complete with cold cuts, brotchen, fruit, soft boiled eggs, cereal, coffee and tea (the typical German breakfast), we finished breakfast just as the tour guide arrived to pick us up. Peter, who spoke wonderful English because he grew up in the US was a jolly fellow, in no big hurry he had a cup of tea while we finished breakfast and loaded up for the half day tour. We met up with a bus full of Americans eager to see the Sound of Music sights. Peter was hilarious and cracked pretty funny jokes the entire trip, which made the tour much more enjoyable for David, and all the husbands, along for the ride! We learned tons of interesting facts about the movie and that the American version was released in German only 6 years ago and the Austrians hated it, mostly because Hollywood changed the story so much. Regardless, I LOVE the American version, as did all the other Americans on the tour!

The first stop was from the scene in the movie where the children and Maria fall out of the boats in their play clothes made from curtains. We learned that they had to take two shoots of the scene because Grettle, the youngest child, really almost drowned. Also an interesting fact is that the building you see in the picture is not the one in the movie, just the water - they shot each direction at a different location! Andrew missed this exciting destination, but had a good nap!

Next we drove to Hellbrunn Castle, where the pavilion Lesile sings "I am 16 going on 17" with the mail carrier. We posed for a shot, but I couldn't talk David into a duet in front of the glass gazebo which was much smaller than I expected.

Next we drove for a half hour up into the mountains, listening to the familiar tunes and singing the whole way - "the hills are alive with the sound of music..aaaa aahhhhhh", I may have been the only one singing, but was pretty sure I would never see any of those people again! We made a few stops for an amazing view of the mountains, the pictures can't compare to the real thing...

We made our way up to the small town, Mondsee, to see the church where the Von Trapps were married in the movie, it was amazing. We had some time to do some shopping and stopped at a cafe to share a cheese danish with hot vanilla syrup and ice cream.

We traveled back down the mountain to Salzburg where our tour came to an end. We got a brochure showing us more sites to visit while exploring the city. We visited Mirabell Gardens and saw most of the scenes from the Do-Re-Mi song. We took lots of pictures and I did a bit of singing on video too! Above you can see the fountain the children danced around, the tunnel they sang through, the really ugly statue they patted on the head and finally the steps they walked up to end the song.