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Our bike tour left from the Mirabell Gardens at 9:30, and I woke up around 7:30 to make sure I had time to shower. That is one of the things that can be frustrating at hostels—sometimes you have to wait for a while for a shower to open up, and it is difficult to gauge how long the wait might be. That definitely happened at the 3 Ducks in Paris, but not here. Add that to another one of the reasons why this hostel is so much better than the last =]
We decided to do the optional breakfast at the hostel. 3.50euro for all you can eat continental breakfast is a pretty good deal, especially when unlimited coffee is included! After we looked at a map, we realized that the Mirabell Gardens are fairly close to our hostel, so there was no need to rush at breakfast.
A quick disclaimer. When I first heard about the Sound of Music tours, my initial reaction was "Wow. How touristy/lame can you get?" But after reading Rick's review of them (surprisingly interesting and worthwhile) and hearing that Frau Lu really enjoyed it as well, I decided it would be worth checking out. It turned out to be a lot of fun, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone passing through Salzburg. The tour took us to places they had used for filming in the city, some of which I hadn't even picked up on during our self guided tour, and then we went out into the country side. We saw "Fraulein Maria's Abbey" (both the real and the Hollywood version), which is actually called Nonnberg Abbey. From there we biked further into the countryside and saw one of the houses and the lake they use in the movie. The film crew used two different houses, one for the back of the house and one for the front. They're actually different colors even, but oddly enough you don't recognize that in the movie, or at least I never picked up on it. We biked to house #2, the front of the house from the movie, after that.
The film production team built the gazebo specifically for the movie and donated it to the City of Salzburg after they were done filming. Salzburg could have cared less at first and left it in it's original location. However American tourists kept sneaking onto the property to recreate the scene/song "I am 16 going on 17," so the City kept having to move it. It finally ended up on the grounds of Hellbrunn Castle, so we headed there next. The actual gazebo is about 5 times smaller than it looks like in the film (they filmed the inside the gazebo dancing scenes at a set in Hollywood), but it was still cool to see the real thing. Unfortunately the gazebo is locked. Apparently a couple years ago, a woman tried to recreate the scene "I am 85 going on 86" and her Rolfe dropped her and she broke her hip. Poor thing =/
The palace itself was also very pretty. In addition to housing the Sound of Music gazebo, the palace is also known for its trick fountains. In the 17th century, the palace belonged to Prince-Archbishop Sittikus. Apparently he was a real jokester and instead fountains underneath the seats of an outdoor dinner table. He controlled the remote to the fountains, and would set them off on his dinner guests. During this time period, it was rude to stand up before the Bishop had finished his meal (and even more rude to refuse a dinner invitation), so I would venture to guess that his guests were normally quite soaked ;] You can tour the fountains, but we didn't have a long enough break to do that.
The Schloss was the last stop on our tour, so we biked back to the Mirabell gardens with the group after that. This tour company allows you to rent the bikes for the rest of the day for an addition 8euro, so we decided to do that. It was after 1 and Austin and I were starving and thirsty, so we headed for a Biergarten just a couple blocks away. There were two other Fraulein Marie bike tour bikes already parked out front. It turned out that a couple we had met on the tour had the same plan that we did, so we joined them for lunch. They're going to Croatia after Salzburg, and I must say I am quite jealous!
After lunch we said goodbye to Ateret and Avi and headed with our bikes toward Hohensalzburg, the fortress. The fortress is situated on top of the Festungsberg overlooking the city. The compound is quite impressive, and all of the three large castles/palaces I've seen so far are so different from one another, so I haven't reached castle fatigue yet. We parked and locked our bikes down by the Salzach (the river that runs through Salzburg) and hiked up the hill to Hohensalzburg. There is a funicular that will take you to the fortress entrance, but it's really not a difficult walk so we judged the people we saw waiting in line to go up ;] If you walk up, you also save 3euro, which is always a good thing when you're a college student. Originally built to intimidate enemies from attacking the city, the fortress is used today as a museum. The museum includes a Marionette Exhibit, the Festungsmuseum Carolino Augusteum, and the Castle Courtyard, but the best part of the fortress is without a doubt the view: the Altstadt of Salzburg on one side of the fortress and the mountainous countryside made infamous by the Sound of Music on the other. It was a HOT sunny day—not that I'm complaining, especially since the forecast for the past 10 days has been rain all weekend—but we were in desperate need of refreshments. There is an outdoor café attached to the fortress, so we stopped there for apfelstrudel and coffee. The terrace has a killer view of the city and the Alps, and it was so nice to sit and relax in the shade after our hike up the hill.
We wanted to take a longer, more scenic route back into town, but we were planning on going to a concert at 8 so we didn't want to push it. We headed back to the hostel to freshen up a bit instead, and that was probably a really good choice because I could change out of leggings and a tank top into something a bit more appropriate for the setting. We didn't have tickets yet, but we were planning on attending a concert at the Mirabell Palace that we had read about in Rick Steves' guidebook. We dropped off the bikes and go there around 7:30, and luckily we had no problem still getting tickets. We hadn't been to the Mirabell Gardens yet, so we decided to go take a quick peak before the concert started. I have to admit, the strong appeal of the Mirabell Gardens mainly comes from the Sound of Music... these are the gardens that they skip through while singing "Do Re Me" and the scene ends with the children and Maria running up the stairs. The gardens didn't disappoint—definitely worth a visit even without the scene in the Sound of Music, but we didn't have too much time to look around before the concert started, so we decided we would come here again to take pictures before we left for Innsbruck the next morning.
The concert was fabulous. It was held in a smaller, intimate hall in a Baroque setting. The show that night was a piano/violin duet featuring pieces by Mozart and Beethoven. I was a little afraid that the music might put me to sleep. Not that I find it boring or anything, but we had spent the whole day biking and sightseeing without as much coffee as I am used to, and classical music is so relaxing. To my surprise, I had no trouble staying awake for the entire concert, even after wine at intermission! The music filled the hall in a way that was somehow different from something at the Wharton Center. Don't ask me how... it was probably just because it was SALZBURG, if you know what I mean. But regardless, despite the heat I had no trouble staying awake for the entire concert.
After the concert we wandered back to the gardens to see what it looked like at night. It was equally beautiful, with the fountain lit up and the fortress in the background, but unfortunately kind of crappy lighting for picture taking (at least for my "skills"). We found the dwarf park attached to the gardens after that. It was...interesting? I'm not really sure what the purpose of it was, but the dwarf statues were pretty entertaining.
From the dwarf park we walked back towards Café Republic on the off chance that they were holding another part of the festival again tonight. It turns out that they were, but it had just ended and a mob of people was filing out of the place. That was honestly just fine with me, though. I was pretty tired and in the mood for coffee instead of wine, so we did that instead. The coffee helped, but after an hour or so the yawns set in again, so we decided to head back to the hostel. We've got a big day ahead of us in Innsbruck, after all, and I want to be well rested for that!
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