Independent Travel - Salzburg

Hello again! I am now back in Italy and glad to be back. Being able to see so many places over spring break was an experience of a lifetime but also completely draining. Salzburg was great; it was my favorite place that we visited, mostly because everyone was so friendly, and the city was smaller and more relaxed than most of the places we’ve gone. I hadn’t realized until Salzburg how much I missed being in a smaller town. In Genoa and while I’m traveling, I am always in big cities.

When we got to Salzburg, we ate kasekrainers (sausages filled with cheese) for lunch and then visited the Salzburg Cathedral. After that, we strolled and shopped around Getreidegasse, which is an alley known for its shops and for being the birthplace of Mozart. (Mozart was born in a cute, yellow house.) We went to a local restaurant for dinner, where I had clear soup with a cheese dumpling in it. We made sure to be back at our hostel by 8pm because our hostel was showing the Sound of Music! We got to watch the movie before our tour the next day, which was really exciting.

We had to wake up early the next morning for our tour, but I didn’t mind at all since I was so excited. (I know some of you are laughing at me, but Erin and I grew up on this movie.) The tour ended up being just 4 people - Judith and I and an older couple from Oklahoma. Our tour guide drove us around in a van, while we listened to the Sound of Music soundtrack and sung along (no lie!) It was so cheerful and relaxing. She took us to a bunch of the different points where the movie was filmed. We saw the actual Von Trapp house, the outside of the house used for the movie, the patio and lake of the Von Trapp house in the movie, the gazebo, the abbey, the tree lined street and fountains where Julie Andrews sings, the mountains, and the wedding church. I was expecting to be able to go into the house of the Von Trapps, but unfortunately, that wasn’t possible on the tour. The inside of the house in the movie was just a set built in Hollywood, and the actual Von Trapp house is now a bed and breakfast that doesn’t allow tours. It all worked out ok though, because there were other things we got to see that I wasn’t expecting. Our tour took us through some nearby towns like St. Gilgen, Fuschl, and Montsee, where a lot of the scenery from the movie was shot, and they were some of the most gorgeous places I have ever seen. Had we not done the tour, I wouldn’t have even known those places existed. The wedding church was in Montsee, and we were able to stop there for about an hour for a strudel break! Judith got apple strudel and I got cheese strudel – both were delicious.

After the tour, we wandered around the shops for a little while. We found a cute shop that had thousands of hand-painted easter egg ornaments made with real eggs. There were egg cartons of these things piled 3 feet high everywhere! We also found a grocery store that sold peanut butter! I bought a jar because that is not an opportunity to be missed. I have yet to find a jar of peanut butter in Italy. We went back to our hostel to check out and catch our train to Vienna, but first, we got a complimentary Edelweiss cocktail from our hostel for booking our tour through them!