The Hills are Alive

On our third day in Munich we decided to take a train to Salzburg, Austria.  When planning our trip I realized that Salzburg was fairly close, so we started looking into it. If we took the high-speed train, we would arrive in an hour and a half; the slower regional train would take two hours. We discovered that with the regional train, we could buy an all-day pass for the four of us at a relatively low cost, making it worth the extra half hour of travel time.

On the day we made our way to the train station.  I won't go into too many details here (I'll save that for another post)  but when we finally got our tickets, we struggled to find our train. John went to the information office, where we learned that the direct train had been canceled due to construction. Instead, we would have to take three different trains, resulting in a three-hour trip each way.

We eventually made it to Salzburg and it did not disappoint! What a beautiful place!

John and I had already decided what we wanted to do for the day, but the boys weren’t too keen on the idea, so they opted for a Bavarian Mountain Tour.

As for us… drum roll… we did the Sound of Music Tour!

Hollywood has a way of making places seem better than they actually are, but that’s not the case with The Sound of Music. What you see in the opening minutes of the film truly reflects the Austria we experienced 70 years later. From the stunning mountains and pristine lakes to the picturesque villages, we felt like we were part of the movie.

We spent 4 hours driving around Salzburg and up into the Alps to visit some of the places where the movie was filmed, happily singing songs from the movie as we went. 

So - Let's start at the very beginning. A very good place to start. (sorry, I just had to do that.)

Our first stop was Schloss Leopoldskron, now a hotel, this was the site of the Von Trapp family home in the movie.  The exterior of the house, was located elsewhere, but this was what they used for the grounds of the home.  The lake behind the home was this lake.  It was used in a few of the scenes, most notably where Maria and the children fall out of the rowboat and into the water.

Later in the tour, we passed the actual home they used for the outside shots, Frohburg Palace.  We couldn't stop to see it (I don’t remember why), but we tried to get some pictures in passing.  This is the outside of the home that you see in all the shots, including where Maria is singing "I Have Confidence" when she arrives at the Von Trapp home and is singing and skipping along the wall, and when the family is trying to escape from the Germans.

We passed by the Nonnburg Convent. The real Maria was a resident here in her younger years, and it's the spot they used in the film for all the outside shots of the convent. If we had more time I would have loved to have gone up to walk around.  Instead we had to settle for a drive-by.

It seems that for a lot of people on the tour the highlight was seeing the gazebo. Yes, THE gazebo seen in the Von Trapp garden where I Am Sixteen Going on Seventeen was filmed, and seen in the scene where Captain first kisses Maria.  In actual fact, there were three gazebos used in these scenes - a larger one used in a Hollywood studio for filming the dance inside, a half gazebo, also in the studio, for filming the thunder and lighting, and this one which was used for the outside scenes.

From there we went up into the mountains to the town of Mondsee where the wedding of Captain and Maria was filmed. This had to be my favourite part of the whole tour.  The little town, itself, was so picturesque, on a beautiful mountain lake. The outside of the Church was filmed at the Abby at the convent in Salzburg, but the inside was here, at the Church in Mondsee.

The church in Mondsee - they used the Abby in Salzburg for exterior shots

The inside of the Church is where they filmed the wedding

Our final stop was back where the tour began - Mirabell Garden.  There were many spots in the garden that were used to film the  Do-Re-Mi song, including the arbour, the fountain and the steps.

The Do-Re-Mi steps

I loved taking this tour and John graciously went along.  He didn't sing along, and may have rolled his eyes a time or two, but I know he loved it too.

More than that, however, I loved seeing Salzburg. This beautiful town in the Alps was worth every moment it took to get there!