We woke up when my alarm went off at 6:45 AM and I headed
straight for a shower. We got ready, headed for breakfast and then headed out.
We had initially thought we would just take the bus into town today and return
to drive to our hotel for the night – Sheraton Fuchlsee-Jagdhof which is about 45
mins from our pension. But, we had tickets for the Salzburg Marionette Theater
performance of Sound of Music which started at 7:30. I assumed it would be
about 2 hours and the thought of taking a bus back and then leaving for our
45-minute drive seemed too much. We decided to drive into town and find a
parking garage near the theater. We found one and walked all day.
It was raining quite heavily when we left and our first stop
was the Mozart Wohnhaus (the house his family lived in) on the way from our
parking garage to the old town. It was another fascinating museum and both
Sheila and I enjoyed it. We then walked to the old town and found ourselves in
front of St. Peter’s Cathedral, which was on our list of sights to see. The
cemetary was beautiful and the iron gates to many crypts served as the
inspiration for the Church escape scene setting in the Sound of Music. We
walked up the catacombs, carved out of a sheer rock cliff and saw the graves of
Nannerl (Mozart’s sister) and Franz Michael Haydn (good friend of Mozart and
brother to Josef Haydn). We visited their on-site bakery where the bread is
made using traditional methods and purchased some rolls.
Then, we slowly wandered towards the Hohensalzburg Fortress.
We took the funicular up to the top and spent a few hours wandering through all
the museums there. What fascinating history and amazing artifacts. Plus, the
views from the top of the fortress are just amazing.
From there, we walked to Nonnberg Abbey, which served as the
outside setting for several shots in Sound of Music. We saw the gates where the
von Trapp children went looking for Maria and even wandered into the chapel. We
could hear the nuns practicing their choral singing in the background and it
was just magical.
We walked down the mountain and headed towards the
Monchsberg lift to get up to the terrace on the other side of Hohensalzburg. On
the way we saw a café selling Salzburg Nockerl and decided we had to try it
despite the €14 price tag. Let’s just say it’s not something we’ll
readily order again. Maybe if there were 5 people to share it. It has a strong
egg taste (it is whipped egg whites, after all) and is quite sickeningly sweet.
We had our fair share and left the rest for the starving kids in Africa. We got
to the terrace, but didn’t stay long as it was pouring with rain.
We walked to the Marionette theater after walking around
Mirabell Gardens for a bit and then enjoyed a very interesting performance of
Sound of Music at the beautiful theater of the Salzburg Marionette Theater
Group. It was an abbreviated version of the show and was extremely interesting.
Totally cute and enjoyable.
When we got in the car, we discovered that the Sheraton
Fuchslee resort was only about a 25 minute drive and got here around 10:30 PM.
We dropped our bags off in the room, headed for dinner of Stiegl beer and pizza
(Sheila had Almdudler as usual) and got back to the room well after midnight.
Again, I’m staying up to finish this blog post.
We got to see a lot of Salzburg, but the weather didn’t
cooperate as much as I would have liked. The Sheraton is in the mountains on a
lake and seems beautiful. We had originally talked on the drive of going to St.
Gilgen (Lakes district where several Sound of Music scenes were filmed)
followed by a stop at Mondsee cathedral (site of the wedding scene in the
movie), and completely cutting out Vienna. Now, we’re thinking we may even cut
out those two Sound of Music sites if the area around the hotel is as beautiful
as it seems.
According to weather.com, today was a nice day in Budapest.
But, it also says there’s going to be two days of rain (Saturday-Sunday) before
returning to sunshine on Monday. Of course, the only two days we have in
Budapest are Saturday and Sunday. We certainly do seem to be jinxed.
However, Sheila is the best travel companion ever. She kept
our spirits high throughout the day. She seemed to be having fun and soaking in
the ambiance of the city. I tend to be a demanding traveler in the sense I want
to soak in as much of my environment as possible when I travel. It’s all about
the experience of being there, so I prefer to do a LOT of walking, wandering
into churches, museums, cafes and stores that catch my eye. So we end up
walking for several miles, usually without any fixed itinerary or goal other
than to enjoy the pleasure of just “being there.” It is part of the arbitrary
wandering experience I enjoy so much. Sheila is game for everything. She never
complained or whined about the weather – she shut me down if I ever started.
She was game for anything even though she must have been exhausted at times
during the day. I couldn’t ask for a better person to travel with and someone
as gung-ho and genuinely seeming to enjoy every part of the trip despite the
depressing weather.
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