OK, so we may be daggy, but today we had a wonderful day on the Sound of Music! tour in Salzburg, and it wasn't nearly as cheesy as it sounds. OK, so it was a bit cheesy, but not as bad as we thought it was going to be.

We drove around Salzburg and the Austrian countryside seeing some of the sites that were used for the film and hearing stories about the production that actually were very interesting. For example, the real Maria Von Trapp was so upset with the film that she threatened to expose the "lies" (or Hollywood interpretations). The studio paid her off with $900,000.

It was hilarious to hear that in the opening sequence where Maria runs from the mountainside down to the Abbey, the mountain and abbey portrayed are actually about 10 miles away from each other, meaning that Maria must have been a superb athlete to make the run in a matter of seconds.

There were plenty of other examples of liberties Hollywood took with the story and they were all delivered with hilarious aplomb and perfect timing by our tour guide, Peter, who kept us thoroughly entertained for the entire 4 hour tour. He had us in fits of laughter at times, and thankfully there was no audience participation or group singing required, although the soundtrack was played during the day, with Peter miming Julie Andrews speaking parts to Do Re Mi.

Some of the places they took us in the lakes district were stunning. The countryside of Austria is so picturesque and thankfully untouched by the second world war, which is refreshing after Munich, where 90% of the city was utterly destroyed in 1945.

Our tour ended at 1:15 and we had a light lunch then wandered around Salzburg for a couple of hours. Unfortunately it was raining all afternoon, which made sightseeing difficult.

We came back to the Sacher Hotel for afternoon tea where we tried a cheese strudel, which was really tasty, then Lidia went back to the room to avoid the rain and I went out by myself and took a lift inside a mountain that ascends 60 metres up to a lookout with superb views over Salzburg. The rain stopped just long enough to take some awesome pictures.

After I returned, we sat in the Sacher Hotel's magnificent lounge and had a few drinks before heading out for dinner.