Salzburg, Day 2
Breakfast at Pension Ballwein was very different from the standard English breakfasts we’d had in the UK. Instead of fried up eggs, potatoes, bacon, sausage, and beans, here we ate lighter with breads, cheeses, sandwich meats, yogurt, granola, fruit, and olives. It was delicious, and we ate a lot.
Our morning activity was Fraulein Maria’s Bicycle Tour. Our guide was from Romania but had been a student in the United States for a year. While in the states, she fell in love with The Sound of Music movie, and she now spends her summers guiding bicycle groups in and around Salzburg to see a mixture of historical sites as well as both movie locations for the Sound of Music and places with connections to the Von Trapp family. I adored the movie when I was little, and I even sneaked the wedding music from the movie into my own wedding as the recessional (Mike had no idea for years). I absolutely loved every minute of today’s tour. Today was my day where I got to choose a destination and activity. I loved seeing where the movie was filmed, I loved the cheesy photo shoots our guide set up, I thought it was awesome when she put a speaker into someone’s bike basket and blared the soundtrack as we rode through the countryside, and I loved singing along with everyone as we pedaled down tree-lined bike paths and across fields of flowers. It was so much fun.
Felsenreitschule, the theater where the Von Trapp family performs in the movie
Probably the ugliest sculpture of Mozart ever
St. Peter’s Churchyard: the inspiration for those graves the movie family used as hiding places
Residenzplatz Fountain
Trying to still look cool while your wife drags you on a Sound of Music tour
View of the mountains from Nonnberg Abbey
The Nonnberg Abbey gate
The real Von Trapps were married here, at Nonnberg, while the movie couple “married” 15 miles away in Mondsee
The gate where Gretl shows the nuns her injured finger
Following along with our tour
Schloss Leopoldskron, the back side of the ” Von Trapp” mansion
Hellbrunner Allee, where everyone gets to take a turn singing, “I Have Confidence”
Schloss Frohnburg, now the Mozarteum Music Academy, was used as the front of movie Von Trapp mansion
The gazebo now sits in the Schloss Helbrunn gardens
In Do Re Mi, Maria dances with the children across the bridge and along the river
Racing through the covered path at Mirabell Gardens
Our tour group on the Do Re Mi steps (entrance to Mirabell Gardens)
After the bike tour, we went to Salzburg’s Old Town and found Mozart’s birthplace. We also did some window shopping. The Mozart ducks were cute, and the little bouncing Mozart figurine was adorable (although unlikely to survive the trip home in our packs).
Somehow I think Mozart would be okay with H&M next door
A small army of Mozart ducks
We love this little bouncing Mozart puppet, but we sadly can’t figure out how to get him home in one piece
We ended the day walking up the path to the castle. We didn’t have enough time to get much out of a museum visit, so we timed our walk for when our guidebook said we could walk the grounds without paying for museum admission. I think our guide was out of season, though, because. We were an hour off. Instead of doing the museum, we followed the walk down the fortress wall across town and got some great views.
Salzburg (from the path up to the castle)
