We had intended to take a Sound of Music bus tour the last day. We had to check out of our apartment early and had a late night train home. That meant a whole day of carrying all our backpacks, halberds, and souvenirs before getting to the train. At the last minute we decided it would be too expensive and perhaps not very interesting for the little kids, and decided to walk to most of the Sound of Music sights ourselves. I found a website that had a walking tour you could do yourself, so we used it as a basic guide for our day.
We started out at the Mirabell Gardens. At the very edge of them is this amazing tree that is falling over, but held up by metal supports. The kids played here for a long time before we checked out the gardens. It was fun to see the gardens, but I wish we could have come just one or two weeks later when the tulips started to bloom! The fountains and pansies were beautiful.
I was way more interested in posing for photos than the kids, but they did like seeing all the different statues, fountains, the tree tunnel, and they (sort of) humored me when I constantly asked them to pose for pictures.
Most of the sights in the Sound of Music were just small glimpses of the city while Maria and the kids sing “Do Re Mi”. I enjoyed finding all those little spots. I love this huge horse fountain at the base of one of the mountains that surround Salzburg.
We walked over to the theater where the Von Trapps perform in the movie, which is a beautiful theater built into the base of the Mönchsberg mountain. We didn’t do the tour (I’m a little sad, hopefully I will see the inside of it someday), but we did go to the square outside where the Captain waited to go on stage and hiked up the awesome stone stairs that lead to the top of Mönchsberg. The stairs were very steep and there were a lot of them, but the views from the top were worth every step! We spent a lot of time on top of this beautiful mountain, hiking around and enjoying the views.
There are castle walls, towers, and buildings all over this mountain. It was so fun to explore and for the kids to play. They played for hours exploring the forests and fortress fortifications. From the top you could see the home that was used as the backyard in The Sound of Music, with the lake where the canoe tipped over. I have never explored this mountain before and it ended up being my very favorite part of the whole week. I am glad I found the Sound of Music walking tour simply because it led us here!
After coming down the mountain, we stopped by two cathedrals in the old town of Salzburg. They are both beautiful and best of all, there were church bells ringing most of the day. It was beautiful to hear the bells while climbing the mountain and to hear them again when we got down. The kids played in the big square in front of the church and then we enjoyed seeing the inside of the Salzburg cathedral. In Mozart’s day it had five working organs that could be played simultaneously, and it still has beautiful organ pipes all around the wall above the entrance.
We took the 8:00pm train out of Salzburg and I couldn’t believe how good the kids were the whole train ride. They played Uno for two and a half hours, and only James fell asleep near the end of the trip. This was such an amazing week. Vacation with kids can be hard, but we really enjoyed Salzburg. There were great bakeries, yummy restaurants, and it is a beautiful place to explore. The kids really enjoyed the city and even on the last day with the questionable weather and tons of walking, they had such a great time exploring.
