Our Wonderful Weekend in Salzburg

So, I figured I'd give Linz a break and update the blog for our most recent adventure. This past weekend we traveled to Salzburg (birthplace of Mozart and setting for "The Sound of Music"). This was actually Linz's bday trip...we just delayed it for a week since I had a 3-day weekend.

Salzburg was awesome!! We went on the Sound of Music tour, took a tour of the Bavarian mountains and the salt mines ("Salzburg" translation = salt mountain...who knew?), visited the Hohensalzburg fortress, and on our last night we experienced the Mozart Dinner Concert at the Stiftskeller St. Peter restaurant (which is the oldest restaurant in Europe).

We have tons of pictures, so I'll have to break this down by category....

First we have the Sound of Music tour. I grew up watching this movie, so this was a pretty interesting tour for me. As you may or may not know, the story of the Sound of Music is a true story based on the life of Maria Von Trapp. The tour took us to all the main locations from the movie. Here are some pictures...

This is the Captain's lake house from the movie (although not the real Von Trapp house). If you look closely, you can see the flower garden towards the bottom right. This is where Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer danced during his little "party."
These next two pictures are from the "Do-Re-Mi" song. The first picture is the statue of Pegasus, which the children and Maria danced around. Next is Linz with the gnome statue that the children all pass and tap on the head during the song. Next time you watch the movie, keep an eye out for the gnome. In the park, there's a whole section with like a dozen gnome statues, and we just happened to take a picture of the one that was in the movie...craziness.
Next we have the gazebo from "Sixteen Going on Seventeen" where Liesel and Rolfe sing and dance. Awwww......
And last we have Mondsee Church, which is where the Baron and Maria get married. This is actually well outside of Salzburg...took about 40 minutes by bus to get here...

So, that does it for the Sound of Music stuff. We actually saw more than this, but these were the best pictures.

Now, on to the Bavarian mountain/salt mine tour. Unfortunately, it was rather foggy on Saturday, so we didn't really get any pictures of the Alps. Oh well, guess we'll just have to go back. But the salt mine tour was really good. We had to put on these suites so we wouldn't get salt all over our clothes, and we traveled almost a mile into the mountain by a little rail track. Once in the mountain, we had to venture down. This was accomplished by slides...yup just like at the playground. And eventually we had to cross a salt lake within the mountain in order to get out. If you want to know how they mine the salt....well, look it up yourself, this blog post is already too long....

Here we are in our super-cool salt mine uniforms....

Here is one of the mine shafts....

And here is the salt lake we had to cross...

Next we have our tour of the Hohensalzburg fortress. This is the largest fortress in Europe and was built by Archbishop Gebhard around 1077. I have a lot of pictures for this one....

My favorite pic...you can see the fortress overlooking the city.

Road to the top...

View from the top...

Me and Linz at the top...

Canon overlooking the city...

Ye old toilette...

Armory...

Mask of shame and other torture devices....this was a cool room!
See that house in the middle? That was the executioner's house. They had to separate him from the rest of the village cause apparently no one wanted to be near him!! Hard to believe...

These walls and towers surround the city...you see 'em everywhere.

One of the many passages in the fortress...

Tracks leading up to the fortress. You can pay 10 euros to take the tram or just hike it. Of course, we're in such peak physical condition that we hiked it....and almost lost our lunch in the process...

Alright, and now for the Mozart Dinner Concert. This was our last night there. We had a 3-course dinner while listening to a live string ensemble and 2 operatic singers. I'm not much in to opera, but these people were fantastic. And next to us sat a married couple from Belfast. They had awesome accents! We enjoyed talking to them as much as the concert. Definitely have to make it out to Ireland at some point...

Here we are before the evening began...
Male singer with string ensemble behind him...
Female singer...

And here's a movie clip of the two of them singing 'Papageno! Papagena!' from Mozart's "The Magic Flute." It's too dark to see anything, but you can still hear them...




And now for some miscellaneous photos...

Linz and I in front of one of the many lakes in the lake district...this might actually be Mondsee lake, I don't remember...

Mirabell Palace...this was built by one of the Archbishop's in 1606 for his girlfriend. They ended up having 15 kiddies together. Naughty naughty!


View of the fortress from the Gardens in Mirabell Palace...
Birthplace of Mozart...

Linz looking upon her husband with loving adoration...

There we go...there's the look I was hoping for...


Alright, that will do for now. We took way too many pictures to post them all here. But these were some of the best. Overall, I must say that Salzburg was great. It would have been better if it wasn't as foggy...but can you do? Not sure where our next trip will be, but we'll be sure to take plenty of pics.