Friday, November 4, 2011

Salzburg: Where the hills are alive with the Sound of Music

From Austria, we took a train ride to Salzburg. If you haven't realised, Salzburg is the town where part of the movie, The Sound Of Music, was filmed.

Although we liked the movie, we didn't join any of the tours that bring tourists around the places where the movie was filmed. Having joined the Lord of the Rings tour in Christchurch before, we knew that the tour was just about bringing people to the place, and then describing the part where the movie scene was recorded. And because we haven't watched the Sound of Music for a very long time, none of us could recall any of the scenes, so it would be more of like paying so much money to visit the mountainside with no memory of the show.

Salzach River or Salzburg River, one of the main attactions of Salzburg

So instead, we visited the top attractions in Salzburg, beginning with the Mirabell Palace. This palace was also recorded in the movie where Maria and the children sang "Do-Re-Mi" while dancing around the fountain. The garden. We didn't enter the palace but took pictures of the garden surrounding it. However, it wasn't as nice as Schoenbrunn Palace in Austria.

Like Prague (read here and here), there is also an old town and a new town in Salzburg. We visited the Residenzplatz Square where there is the biggest Baroque fountain in Middle Europe called the Residenzbrunnen.

Residenzbrunnen

We also dropped by Kapitelplatz, which was close by, where we saw a big golden yellow ball in the middle of the square.

From here, you can see the Salzburg fortress sitting grandly on top of Festungsberg mountain.

There, I bought some pretzels because it seems to be popular there but it tasted quite bad because it was too cold. I guess they have left the pretzels outside far too long. It wasn't cheap either. Each pretzel cost Euro 2.50.

Near Kapitelplatz was Salzburger Dom or the Salzburg Cathedral. Honestly, because we visited too many cathedrals in Prague, we felt a bit bored and less appreciative of the fine architecture in Salzburg Cathedral.

Getreidegasse is an interesting place where one can find many shops and restaurants.

Alter Markt Square

We also visited Mozart's apartment, Mozarthaus Vienna. We read that the Mezzanine floor of the apartment was free so we went upstairs, looking at the old piano, the grandfather's clock etc, when someone in charge told my family that the floor we were on wasn't the Mezzanine floor. At that time, I was in the other rooms, far from my family so I continued reading on, the letters and listened to the scores as well. It was about half an hour or so, that I started to realise that my family wasn't with me. I got quite worried. What if my parents thought that I was with them and they continued walking on? But wouldn't Chin Fei realise that his wife isn't with him?? Or was he too engross talking to my brothers?? I couldn't make any calls because I wasn't on a roaming profile so I went downstairs to the ground floor to find my family just coming out from the souvenir shop. They told me that we had to pay to enter so they waited for me downstairs instead because they couldn't go and find me. Lol. So it was like a repeat of Chin Fei entering the Royal Observatory at Greenwich for free. Haha. :P

The highlight of our trip in Salzburg has got to be going up the mountain Mönchsberg by lift to see splendid breathtaking views of the Salzburg town. This sight was also captured in the Sound of Music, Do-Re-Mi scene.