Sound of Rain

On Saturday, May 12, we drove to Salzburg, Austria for our planned day trip. It was cold and rainy which provided us with the opportunity to use our new umbrellas. We left later than originally planned because we all needed a bit of a relaxed morning. This meant that once we arrived, we didn't have enough time to visit the Mozart sites prior to our scheduled Sound of Music Tour.

We decided to simply get lunch in a cafe and then take the planned tour. We also decided that we would come back on Sunday after church and tour the Mozart residence so we wouldn't miss what we had hoped to see.

Two o'clock found us outside of Bob's Tours, checking in for our mini-bus tour. We had thought it would only be our family as we had understood that the van only held eight people. But instead we were with seven others riding in this bigger vehicle.

 

Beatrice was our guide and she told us a bit of the history of Austria and of the Von Trap family and of The Sound of Music movie. I'm still not certain what I thought of the tour. Maybe it was the cold, rainy day which dampened my spirits, but overall it was simply an "okay" tour.

We did see some of the sights, like the back of the castle where they fell in the lake.

And a row of trees which is like the row of trees from which they hung, because the original ones are much larger now and are by a busy road.

 

 

The gazebo is now in a public place because while it was in its original place it was on private property. The owners of the property grew wearisome of people coming to see the gazebo and requested the city to move it to a public park.

 

We drove to the place where the opening scenes from the movie were filmed from a helicopter.

We stopped and ate delicious apple strudel at a small family-run restaurant overlooking that lake from the opening scenes.

 

Samuel chose to only have ice-cream and it was served in this neat dish.

 

He loved it so much, he asked how much it would cost to purchase. The owner said he could have it for free because it had a chip in it already. Samuel was thrilled and plans to use it as his ice-cream dish all summer long.

 

The tour was almost over, just a stop at the wedding church,

 

 

before the last stop at the Mirabelle Gardens where the rain came down more heavily.

 

 

It was neat to see these sites in person of one of our favorite movies. I think my disappointment lies with too high of expectations (I had thought we would get to see these places up close, not from such a distance due to them being located on private property), and the weather which was less than ideal.

But my favorite thing was visiting with the people on the bus. One couple were from Rochester, MN. He works at the Mayo clinic with a specific rare disease and had been at a conference in a northern European country. These conferences are all over the world every year and he and his wife tack on vacation days to explore the world.

Another couple was from New York. He and his wife had been in Prague, and were going on to Vienna, and one other place before visiting Cambodia. They had an accent and I learned that they had immigrated to America twenty-two years ago from Russia. Their first stop from Russia was Austria, so they have fond memories of that country.

The last three people on our trip were a husband, wife, and son. The parents were from Kenosha, WI and their grown son currently lives in New Orleans. I didn't understand what the son's occupation was but it involved lots of traveling which accumulated in lots of points for hotel and flights. He used these to treat his parents (they were in their late seventies) to trips all over the world each year. On this trip they had just spent a month in Paris and a week in Amsterdam. They were then going on to Vienna and maybe somewhere else before going home.

All of these people were so friendly and we enjoyed visiting with them and learning a little about them. One interesting fact that we all shared, besides being Americans, was that we all were using, or had used the Rick Steve's guide books.

Despite the rain and cold and not getting to see the Mozart sites, we did enjoy our day. Next time, we will plan on spending more time in Salzburg to explore what it has to offer.