Salzburg!

Salzburg, Austria

From October 24th to 26th we went to the home of the my favorite movie "The Sound of Music! "  This was one thing that I wanted to do when we first decided to go to Germany.  The trees were beautiful and the city was full of life.  Many in Germany refer to Austria as looking like "Germany before the World Wars."  The buildings were old, and the cobblestone streets in tact.  
Our time in Salzburg was wonderful! We flew out very early Friday morning and arrived back to Koln on Sunday night around 11:30pm. We had a lot of time to see the city of 150,000 and all of the sites.  It is also surprising that most people in Austria (like Germany) are not familiar with the movie.  This is different in Salzburg where about 75% of jobs are in some way tied to tourism.

Friday we took the 4 hour "Original Sound of Music Tour" and it was amazing!  I think Chad even enjoyed the tour and Will was a happy baby smiling at the people on the bus.  He did a great job and hung out a lot with his dad while his mom soaked in the sites and the music they played on the bus.  We learned a lot about real Trapp Family as well. Of course I bought the book.

Our Hotel was located next Marabell Gardens where lots of scenes from Do Re Mi were filmed.  Chad was impressed with how perfect the grass was and I was impressed that flowers were still alive.  Everything was also smaller than I thought, except for the Hohensalzburg Fortress. The church where the wedding was filmed was much smaller than I thought.

During our Tour we drove up to the mountains outside of Salzburg to Mondsee where the Church for the wedding was located.  Just so others know, this was the only indoor scene shot in Salzburg. The rest were done in film studios in Hollywood.  The countryside was also beautiful and was very relaxing. We passed by the headquarters of Red Bull and were impressed with the office buildings set into the countryside.  I wouldn't mind going into the office.  

On Sunday we the birth place of Mozart.  The building where he grew up was redone and was more of a museum of artifacts, information, and art.  It was amazing to think about how old things were and also how much Mozart did in his short life.  We also found out he was one two children to his parents that lived.  Most children didn't live past the age of 3 and his parents had 7 children total and only 2 lived into adulthood.  

On Saturday we spent the day touring the city of Salzburg and also touring the Festung Hohensalzburg.  It was located on the top of the hill and we had to take a gondola to get to the top.  It was begun in 1077 and was absolutely HUGE!  It was a museum with lots of Austrian history and we could have spent days touring it, however we had Will so we only spent a few hours.  We also had to figure out how to take the stroller around with us.  It was definitely a site worth seeing and gave us a look at how people lived several hundred years ago. The history in Europe is amazing and it makes the US seem so young.  We also learned that Salzburg was a very walled city with several old stone walls built into the sides of the hills protecting the various fortresses that were built.
I think Chad and I would both agree that this is a city worth visiting. It has a calmer pace than say Paris and was just beautiful.  We walked everywhere and enjoyed the many toy stores and markets.  We didn't buy much but liked just looking around.  I would say this is one of my favorite places so far!

Will  went Swimming!

Will also went swimming for the first time at our hotel.  He liked the water but loved the mirrors all over the pool more. He didn't know where to look.  He was pretty funny.