The Hills Are Alive

Our next stop in the journey was in the beautiful city of Salzburg, Austria. I'll talk more about the city in another post because I want to dedicate this one to our Sound of Music adventure.

When I went to Europe the first time on the FVC music tour, I loved Salzburg, but felt robbed of one essential part of the city - the Sound of Music Tour. I remember begging Mr. Myung if we could use our free time to go on the tour. He said no, and it was at that point I decided I wanted to your Europe on my own terms. Being on a school trip at the time, I couldn't just abandon the group without severe consequences, so I pledged to myself to return one day and do the tour.

Fast forward 6 years and I am back in Salzburg Austria, but on a budget. I wanted to travel Europe as cheaply as possible, partly because I didn't have a lot of money to work with, but also because the Dutch side of me craves good deals. My sister and I noticed the different tours offered cost anywhere from 30-60 Euros, which translates to around $45-90. I decided that was too expensive, so we researched instead where the tours went, located those places to the best of our ability on our map of Salzburg and decided to rent bicycles for a few hours for under 10 Euro and show ourselves around. We both know the Sound of Music well enough to recognize the sites when we see them.

It was a super hot day, we only had a few hours, and the places were pretty far apart, so we didn't waste any time getting going. We started at Mirabell Gardens, where Maria takes the kids when they go out on the town and they sing and run through the garden, so we did precisely that.

Next, we set out to find Nonburg Abbey, which is used as Maria's abbey for parts of the film. Since it's up on the hill by the Salzburg Fortress, I figured we'd have to pay to get there because you have to pay for the fortress. Turns out you don't, but we didn't know that at the time, so we returned later when we went to see the fortress. We then biked out several kilometers to see the back view of the Von Trapp house. I was leading with the map, and the signs and directions were very misleading. It was super hot out, so we're sweating and thirsty, and we get lost. We did manage to locate it after a little arguing and discussing how if we were in the Amazing Race, this would be the leg we would lose on.  (Side note, I have always wanted to be on the Amazing Race, and my sister would want to as well, so we pretended a lot on this trip that we were on the show. It worked because the trip was pretty fast-paced, so you had to be ready each day to do as much as possible.)

Back view of Von Trapp house in the Sound of Music

After this, we biked to Helbrunn Palace where the infamous gazebo from the movie is now found. We got lost again, but the way there we were planning how we were going to dance around it and sing. When we got there, out dreams were shot down because the gazebo is locked. You can't go inside. So we just had to take pictures outside instead.

At this point, we were exhausted and our rental was almost up, so we biked back to the city to return our bikes. This was definitely the cheapest way to go see the sights. We got back to our hostel (JUFA Salzburg - good place to stay - clean, large rooms and bathrooms, $28 a night, and good continental breakfast), took cold showers, than walked around the city before heading out to watch the last Harry Potter (in English) at the local theatre.

Definitely a good way to spend a sunny day in Salzburg.