Salzburg, Austria

We were up bright and early for our all day trip to Salzburg, Austria where we were able to explore the town and find many of the sites from the movie, "The Sound of Music." This was the part of the trip I was most excited to experience!

The bus trip was about an hour and a half, but when we saw the Alps, we knew we were getting close!

Our tour guide was dressed in her authentic Austrian clothes, and did a great job showing us the many sites that Salzburg has to offer, although her wealth of knowledge was overwhelming!

I wanted to see how similar some of our pictures were to the movie scenes, so I tried to find ones as close as I could to compare... The top picture in each collage is the original movie scene, and the bottom one is of our views from the day. It was so fun searching around Salzburg for these famous sites!

The hills and the Alps surrounded the whole city, so they were and easy find and hard to miss!

Hellbrunn Palace was used for the shot of the front door of the Von Trapp's house when Maria arrived for the first time, singing "I have Confidence."

In the grounds of Hellbrunn Palace, we found THE gazebo where the songs, "I am sixteen going on seventeen" and "Something Good" were sung! If they had opened the doors, I would have loved to jump from bench to bench like Liesel!

The views of the alps were simply beautiful!

We were taken to the location of the outdoor market where Maria was juggling tomatoes, and there's still a pop-up market stand there!

Our tour wasn't just the Sound of Music sites, but the town of Salzburg as well. As we have all learned, no tour of a European town would be complete without seeing some churches! This one is a Baroque church called the Kajetanerkirche, which was built by monks in the 1600s.

This one is Salzburg Cathedral, which was originally built in 774, and later rebuilt in the 17th century. This is also the church where Mozart was baptized as a child. 

There are many sites to see around the town relating to the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, including this monument of him in Mozartplatz in the historic Old Town.

This was the home of Mozart's Birthplace, where he was born on January 27, 1756, and it is now a museum where his childhood violin can be found!

We found musicians all around town playing classical music, which made this musical city come to life!

Apparently, Salzburg features ALL types of art, including this incredibly random "Pickle monument" that our tour guide was excited to show us. I'm not really sure what to say about that one... but it was definitely interesting! 😕

After the official tour ended, we had several hours to explore on our own, and we had an awesome time. First up was to find a beer garden for lunch, and after quite the hike up, we found the sweetest place called Stiegl-Keller with wonderful food and amazing views of Salzburg!

I had no idea until I got home to do some research, that our view from the restaurant was the same view found in the movie! You can see the Salzburg Theatre from both of our spots!

After lunch, we headed out to find more famous spots from the Sound of Music, stopping first at the beautifully kept St. Peter's cemetery which was founded in 700 AD. Here, you can find the gates that were in the scene of the movie where the nuns let them hide behind the graves from the Germans so they wouldn't be found.

We headed next to the immaculately kept Mirabell Gardens where several very famous scenes of the movie were filmed.

Standing in the same spot as Maria on the top of the steps...

The same pegasus fountain they all danced around...

ACTUALLY standing on the steps!

After an amazing day in Salzburg, we had to say goodbye to the beautiful town and head back to the ship where a fun night of dinner and dancing awaited us (thankfully I'm sparing you pictures of the dancing 😆). We were exhausted after a long day, but thrilled to have been able to make the journey!