What can I say, I'm a shameless Sound of Music fan. So I dragged Tom along on a Sound of Music tour (who would like me to report officially for the sake of his masculinity that he was definitely dragged kicking and screaming, not singing "how do you solve a problem like Maria" at me all day).
First stop was by this lake.
Where we stopped to gaze at this building, and wondered what its relevance was, since it didn't look like the Von Trapp mansion in the movie. As it turns out, some of the internal rooms in the movie were inspired here, and the original gazebo in which Liesel dances used to be on the grounds of this building. The lake scenes (i.e. when Maria and the children fall out of the boat) were recorded here, but anything that included the back of the house itself was recorded elsewhere.
Actually the reason they removed the gazebo from the grounds here was because this building is now a private conference centre, so they didn't appreciate singing dancing tourists coming to play on their grounds. They even had hardcore fans climbing the fence and leaping from seat to seat in the gazebo at all hours of the night.
Tom gave it a try.
Our next move was to visit the gazebo at its new location. It's just as pretty in real life as it was in the movie. Although they've locked the doors because apparently an eighty-year-old lady fell and broke her hip while trying to dance on the benches inside.
It's now on the grounds of a castle that is open to tourists, but that wasn't part of our tour.
We decided to take advantage of the fact that half the bus was standing in the line for the toilets, and do a quick jog around to take a peek at the castle.
And of course pet any dogs we could find. They always look like they're enjoying it, don't they?
Then it was back on the bus admiring the Austrian countryside.
We even got a glimpse of the monastery that Maria was a novice in. It's not open to the public.
The tour guide opened up a bar on the bus. We just couldn't resist trying a local ginger ale softdrink called Almdudler. Seriously. Almdudler! Love it!
But it didn't take long to get distracted by the beauty of the lakes district.
We were intrigued by this cyclist. The bus was stuck behind him for ages, but he was keeping up an absolutely strapping pace, so we could hardly complain.
And then we stopped at the town of Monsee for more Sound of Music-ing.
Our guide said someone once asked him if this sign was based on Michael Jackson.
Monsee is gorgeous.
There had been a wedding in the church. It appeared that the reception was being held at the local ice creamery.
This was the only photo I could get of the bride.
And this is the church. You won't recognise it from the outside, but its inside was used for the wedding of Maria and Captain Von Trapp in the movie.
It has a fabulous ceiling.
In fact, it's pretty fabulous all over, really.
The bridal carriage awaits.
We decided to occupy ourselves sampling the local...wait for it... apple strudel! Do you think we've tried it thoroughly enough?
We only had one to share, by the way, we just took to photos of it. So we're only half a fattie each, ok?
After that we had to attempt to walk it off, seeing what else we could see in Monsee. Like really strange vehicles!
And not strange, insanely expensive vehicles.
And beautiful scenery.
We made it back in time, and giggled a bit at the fact that the painting of Julie Andrews on the side of the bus makes her look like she's mid-yawn.
And giggled again as we passed a tractor on the way back to Salzburg. OK tractors aren't really that funny, but this one looked like it had just dumped a pile of hay about twenty times the size of its trailer. The idea of overloaded vehicles really amuses us (like here). We're weird, ok?
Once the bus dropped us back off in Salzburg, we went straight to the Mirabel Palace gardens, where much of the Do Re Mi song was filmed.
We passed this decorated limo on the way, so were looking forward to seeing our second bride of the day (there really must be a ridiculous number of weddings in Europe per day, we keep running into them!).
And then we hit the pegasus fountain
You may recognise it...
We found the little area where they have all of these little stone gnomes.
This is the one the children danced around and patted on the head.
Tom related to this one, with the shovel.
I hit it off straight away with this guy.
We even stumbled across a maze in the gardens.
Hmm... which way?
Tom's... riding on the back of a lion.
And we found our bride!
And I had to do a Maria and skip down one of these aisles.
And then we found the other fountain that the children dance around.
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| sourced from Starpulse |
Then we left the gardens behind, and searched for one more Sound of Music related landmark - the marionette theatre, upon which the little puppet show in the movie was based.
In an interesting reversal, the marionette theatre now has a Sound of Music show!
And now that's enough. I've got it out of my system. We can see Salzburg the non-Sound-of-Music way now!
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