"DO a deer, a femal deer. RE a drop of golden sun!! In Salzburg, Austria

One of my favorite movies has always been "The Sound of Music". So, to have the opportunity to spend a day there was nothing short of magical and extraordinary!!

The day started off very, very, very.... VERY early. Marvin was at my house by 5:00AM... the sun wasn't even up yet :) It's a good 4 hours drive up to Salzburg, so we wanted to make sure we had an early start in order to have as much time as possible in Salzburg. We took the Autobahn (highway) through Germany and I had quite a few moments where I was afraid I would never make it home in one piece... The Autobahn in Germany does not have a set speed limit... thus, why it's so "famous" and a lot of people like to drive on it... you can go as fast as you want...well... as fast as your car would let you. Marvin got up to 210 kilometers per hour-I'm not sure what that is converted into mph... but I know it's FAST!!!! I was terrified. After that glimpse of possible death, we kept our pace at about 190 kph... not much better :)

We arrived (finally) in the beautiful city of Salzburg (in one piece I might add :) ) and parked the car. We came out of the underground garage and were immediately bombarded with this huge market with food, produce, flowers... you name it!! It actually reminded me of London last summer and the HUGE market we walked through underneath the church... hmmmm I'm starting to see a trend with these European countries..... ;) We started walking around the city and me, with my trusty "Rick Steves" tourist book at hand with my thumb stuck on the page with the map, courageously lead us through the city... until I realized that we had been lost the whole time.... :) Bret... This is where you laugh uncontrollably :) That's right. Heather was extremely over confident in her map reading skills along with her independent traveling skills... and she got herself and Marvin lost... Score one for the American!!!

I was in desperate search of the Mozart Residence where you could walk through the museum and see the actual instruments he used when he was composing his masterpieces at the young age of 4, and countless other timeless pieces. I was really excited!!! Funny thing was, because I was over confident on where it was that we were, we passed a building that had Mozart Museum (in German) written on it and Marvin pointed out that that was the building we were looking for... I firmly told him that it wasn't because according to my map, we were currently on the other side of the building... apparently not. So, we passed the building and continued our journey. Crossing the river, walking underneath arches and buildings, pausing at the Louis Vaton store so that I could take a picture :) we finally made it to what I though was my destination. Turned out, it was Mozart's Birthplace (Birth House in literal translation) that we spent over an hour walking through. While this building was extremely cool and I LOVED looking at the pieces in the museum from his time, this was the building in which Rick Steves told me to skip... So, naturally, after we realized that we had gone to the wrong building I was a little disheartened. Oh well!! "When in Rome!"

Our next stop (once Marvin finally took the map out of my hands and put us in the right direction) was the Hohen Salzburg Fortress. This was an INCREDIBLE site and we spent a large chunk of our time here. When you watch The Sound of Music, this is the castle that is in the background near the top of the screen in the shots where Maria is going through the city, or whenever the Von Trapp family is in the city. It's in the very top portion of the screen at the top of the hill. So that was really neat to come home and watch the movie again Monday night with the Single Adults and say, "LOOK! MARVIN!!!!!!! WE WENT THERE!!!!!" hahahah with my over excited, crazy tourist excitement. Anyway, so the castle was incredible. We hiked up to it, instead of taking the funicular. And seriously, when we made it to the top the view of the old city below was breathtaking!!

I'm running out of time, so here's where the post gets vague and skim through details! lol

After the castle, we went and walked around the Mirabell Gardens at the Mirabell Palace. These gardens were used in the film during the "Do a deer!" Song where the children are running through gardens, a tunnel thing (I have a picture inside it) and playing around statues.... these shots were all filmed at this garden :) It was truly magical that I can go back and look at my pictures or watch the movie and say, "I STOOD RIGHT THERE!!!!!!!!" It's really just an incredible thing!!!!

After the gardens, we drove in desperate search of the Von Trapp Family Mansion (because we didn't go on the Sound of Music tour, which was expensive and I was with an Austrian who had never seen the movie and didn't understand why everyone loves it so much ;) hahahha sorry Marvin :) )and we did find it!! It took us a while and a drive around a lake, but we did find it. The mansion was only used in the movie by using shots of the front of the mansion, and the back. The pictures that I have are of the back of the mansion. We couldn't get to a point where we could see the front. But still!! I saw the balcony where Captain Von Trapp breaks up with his Governness! I saw the exact spot where, right after that part, Captain Von Trapp watches Maria walk along the river's edge and realizes he is in love with her..... *sigh* I love Europe! ;)

We made our way back home, and this time we drove through Austria and Innsbruck-which made the trip longer, but it was BEAUTIFUL!!! We drove up and through the mountains to avoid tunnels that you have to pay for to drive through, and saw snow!! hahahah it was awesome!! I also saw a little piece of the Dolomites again from last summer so that was really cool.

All in all, it was a FABULOUS trip and one that both Marvin and I needed, and greatly enjoyed our time together. Marvin is definitely a friend that I will keep around forever.

Pictures to come-the internet shut down and I lost all 250 photos out of the 300 I took... grrrr!!!
"The Hills are alive! With the Sound of Music!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"