"Do a deer, a female deer/Re a drop of golden sun..."

...Home to Mozart and the Sound of Music, Salzburg has beautiful landscapes with hills and lots of mountains. I can see why people want to live here. Salzburg was a smaller town than I thought it would be. The old town you can walk through in about 30 minutes and see everything, but it is incredibly interesting. When I went to Salzburg, the only thing I really wanted to see were the locations where the Sound of Music (SofM) was filmed. :D

We arrived early morning in Salzburg and spent an hour on a tour around the old town. We visited Mirabell Palace which is small, but has beautiful gardens and a very large fountain in the courtyard. We walked through the courtyard and towards the Salzach river, which runs through the whole city. It was another beautiful day and the townsfolk were taking advantage of having sunshine by laying along the riverbank. It looked so nice and relaxing! In the old town we saw three different places where Mozart had lived during his stay in Salzburg, a few filming locations for Sound of Music, several churches, the main cathedral, and the oldest street in Salzburg. We had a half an hour of free time, so I walked around the city and found a really friendly and kind Austrian man who was selling his paintings. They were really interesting because he would sketch out the scene in pen and then paint over it with watercolors. I bought a small painting from him, which I loved because it was a view of the city from across the river and there were so many colors coming out from the painting. :)
The Salzach river, it separates the old town from the new.
The woman has sold her puppets for over 30 years...incredible!
The oldest street in Salzburg, also where Mozart lived when he was a young boy.
Mozart's second home, the one that is located on the oldest street in Salzburg.
Mirabella palace in the background, with the fountain in the foreground. You can't see the statues, but there are 4 statues around this fountain each one representing: earth, wind, water and fire.
Mirabell Palace's garden
This is part of the Mirabell Palace gardens, but it is also where the "Do, Re, Mi" song was sung in Sound of Music.
The main cathedral in Salzburg.
The organ inside of the main cathedral. Mozart played this organ when he was a young boy and he was baptized in this cathedral as well.
The main altar in the cathedral.
This fountain is the one that Julie Andrews danced around on her way to the Von Trapp family house as she was singing "I've got confidence".
The daily market in one of Salzburg's squares.
One of the many cathedrals on the new town side.

I learned that Salzburg was founded by an Archbishop named Rupert. The archbishops were the ones that ruled over Salzburg and even so, they still built palaces for themselves. Also, the reason that there are sooooo many churches in such a small town is because there was a religious figure head who ruled the town. Apparently, Rupert is a common name in Salzburg.

The night of the 9th, we had dinner at the hotel and it was very nice because the restaurant was at the very top of the hotel (the 15th floor) and we could look out of the windows onto the city and the mountains surrounding us.

On the morning of the 10th, when we were also leaving to return to Munich for our last night of the trip, we took an excursion through Linz (where Hitler was born and also where more scenes from Sound of Music were filmed). We went up into the mountains and snow to see (from afar) Eagle's Nest, where Hitler had a home. It was beautiful to be on top of the mountains because there was snow everywhere and the view was spectacular. On our way back to Salzburg, we stopped at a Schnapps distillery where there was a short introduction on how schnapps are made and then we went into the tasting room and were allowed to try 6 different types. I only tried two, which were very tasty: hazlenut and raspberry.
The house where the Von Trapp Family lived in Sound of Music.
Here I am standing in front of the gazebo where the song "16 going on 17" was song in the Sound of Music. This is also my favorite part of the movie. :D
This is another location for Sound of Music... when the children are playing in the trees and their father is driving along the road with the baron and baroness who have come to visit.
This is in the village of Linz. This church is where the real Maria and Von Trapp got married, but also where the abbey scenes in the movie were filmed.
Our tour director Goran and our fantastic driver Janos (pronounced "yanosh").
The view below Eagle's Nest.
Eagle's Nest on top of the snowy mountain. It is hard to see because it is so far away in the distance.
The schnapps distillery.
Tasting the schnapps...as you can see the hazelnut flavored schnapps was the most popular!

After our short visit, we returned to the hotel to get our luggage and the rest of the group who didn't come with us and headed back to Munich for the last time.