Salzburg and The Sound of Music

My mom arrived last Friday.  We were all happy to see her.  The girls had been counting down the sleeps until Grandma arrived (and so was I) so it was exciting when we picked her up at the airport.  She arrived just before lunch so we were able to have a leaisurely afternoon and send her to bed early to catch up on her jetlag. 

On Saturday my mom and I headed off early to Salbzburg, Austria while Jason stayed home with the girls.  Since we were just going for one night and going on a four hour sound of Music tour it would not have been a fun trip for the kids.  It also gave me some alone time with my mom which was nice since with the girls chatting away I was finding it difficult to get a word in!  The drive to Salzburg took six hours since we hit some traffic but we still managed to get there at a reasonable time so we checked into our hotel (which we learned didn't have air conditioning) and headed out to check out the old town and the fortress on top of the hill in Salzburg.  We managed to get in about four hours of walking around before dinner.  The Old town is very small so we also took time to stop in the shops to see if there was anything worthwhile. :)  Before we called it a day we took the railway up to the fortress which was amazing.  To think they built it 1,000 years ago seems incomprehensible.  After spending time walking around the fortress we headed back down to the town and found a restaurant for dinner and then headed back to the hotel for showers and bed.

In the morning we got up, had breakfast and waited for our pick up for the Sound of Music Tour.  We were both excited to see the places in the movie that we had watched together so many times.  I was a little skeptical when I realized it was a giant tour bus but it turned out to be perfect.  The bus kept us nice and cool and we stopped at most of the sights and got out of the bus to take pictures.  We saw the back of the villa on the pond where the kids fell into the water off the boat, the lane she was walking down singing, "I've got Confidence", the glass gazebo from "Sixteen Going On Seventeen", The monestary from a distance, the church where Maria and the Captain were married, and Mirabell Gardens where the kids are singing "Do Re Mi".  It was a lot of fun.  After finishing the tour we got back in the car and headed home.  We didn't have any traffic so we made it home before the kids went to bed.