Tim and Gem's Honeymoon Adventure: The Hills were alive with the sound of tourists

The place that Gemma has been most excited for this whole trip, Salzburg and the home of everyone’s favourite sing along movie, The Sound of Music (and probably the main reason we went to Salzburg).

We dropped the little car we had fell in love with back to its home and got everything sorted at the hostel, and then went for a walk to find some lunch, and soon found out that on a Sunday in off season, just about everything is closed. We eventually found somewhere that served a mean feed for a reasonable price.

We took it pretty easy that afternoon exploring the beautiful city, stumbling across a few spots from The Sound of Music, and then went back to the hostel to enjoyed a beer and booked a tour for the following day, The Sound Of Music tour in the morning, and then straight after a visit to the salt mines. I don’t know how much Gemma slept that night due to excitement!

Bright and early we rose, ate breakfast and were picked up ready for our tour. We were picked up in a nice 12-seater mini van, and I was stoked thinking no big buses with Sound of Music playing and sing-a-longs, but that feeling quickly diminished when we pulled up next to a huge bus, complete with branding and all.

The tour started and we were led by a very informative guide who pointed out and explained some pretty interesting city facts, some Sound of Music related, and others not. It wasn’t long though until we got our first taste of some Sound of Music sights, with a quick view of the house that she walks into at the start of the movie. Then next up was the lake where all the kids fell out of the boat, and where the original gazebo was located, until the new owners of the mansion relocated it, probably due to the six million tourists coming to Salzburg every year to scope it out. It still does exist though, and was the next stop on the tour. Gem also had a skip down the lane that Maria skipped down at the start of the movie singing.

After seeing a few of the sights around the city, we were then off and into the hills and onwards to the lakes area where all the lovely scenery scenes were shot. Along the drive, it happened, the part I had been dreading… the sing alongs started, and the guide made a point of walking up and down the bus to see if everyone was singing.

We stopped at the roadside and had a lovely view of one of the four lakes, before heading to a small town that was home to the church where the wedding at the end of the film took place. We also had some strudel but there was no schnitzel and noodles on the menu which disappointed Gem a little. After a feed we jumped back on the bus and headed back to Salzburg to visit the gardens and wait for our next adventure to the Salt Mines.

We wandered around the impressive gardens for a while, Gem ran around the fountain, skipped through the leafy archway, patted (and licked) the gnome the kids pat, and of course jumped up the steps of the garden signing Do-Ray-Me. Even though I’m not the hugest, die-hard Sound of Music fan, it was still a fun and interesting tour and really cool to see and recognize the places where the movie was filmed.

Time flew and we got into a mini van and headed for the salt mines, located not far from Salzburg, in the Bavarian mountains. Random fact of the day, Salzburg is named due to its salt mining. Not really knowing what to expect from a visit to a salt mine, we were pretty open minded to how it could go, but we weren’t the most clueless ones, with one Japanese lady in the van not even knowing what tour she was doing, the Bavarian Mountains or the Salt Mines, and when she realized the Salt Mines had a slide/slippery dip, this was the one she had booked. She booked a tour based on a picture of a slippery dip, so we had more of an idea than her of what we would be seeing.

It turned out it was a really interesting tour. The process to get salt, that little white stuff we all take for granted on every dinner table, was actually quite a mission. Mining deep underground, drilling huge pool size holes and filling them with water to remove the salt, and then processing the salty water to extract the salt. A lot of time, effort and money it involved to mine salt!

The appearance of the mine was pretty impressive too, with a small rail running through the mine that had been carved out from the side of the mountain, dark coloured walls with occasional vibrant orange, salty spots and the most impressive sight was the salt lake inside the mountain, that looked like a mirror it was that still and reflective. When we first walked into the room I actually thought it was a mirror, not water!

Just over an hour passed, and a few shiny, extremely fun wooden slides later and our tour had finished, and we were loading back up for a quick stop in a little Bavarian town for a look, and of course a Bavarian beer. We found a little local watering hole and quickly ordered a couple of beers. They went down well, very well, one wheat beer and one dark beer. So well we had enough time to order another, so we went one more wheat beer for Gem and I gave a dark wheat beer a try, something I have never tried before, and it was delightful! The wheat beer was the nicest wheat beer either of us had tried. With 20 minutes left, we thought why not, and ordered one more, this time I ordered one that I can’t remember, but the waiter said it was his favourite, and for good reason, it was amazing. So three pints in an hour, we were feeling pretty good and the journey back to Salzburg flew.

Still a little tipsy, we found a restaurant we had been recommended and headed in, ordered a few more beers and some food, including another schnitzel to add to the schnitzel tally. We devoured our food and headed home, and wasn’t long before we were sleeping like babies!

Our last full day in Salzburg and we decided to check out some of the city sights, and the Natural History Museum we had been told about the previous day by our driver. We started the day up at the Modern Art Museum, located high on a cliff overlooking Salzburg and providing probably the best view of Salzburg you can get. After that we headed down to the Natural History Museum where we spent hours! We looked at the dinosaur exhibitions, then moved onto the aquariums and reptile enclosures, and also saw a temporary photography exhibition that was amazing. A collection of photos taken from a satellite kilometers from the surface of main cities, random impressive natural formations, mining sites, tourism hubs and other locations that produced breathtaking photos.

After checking out all the museum things, we moved onto the Science Center that was joined to the museum, and it was awesome! We got our inner child out for well over an hour.

Skiing games, physical and mental challenges, reaction games, laws of science and loads of hands on fun, that’s what the science center was all about, and it was fun. We even had a race through a maze on a wheelchair that was more challenging then either of us expected.

We had worked up an appetite after that little adventure, so we headed to restaurant for yet another schnitty. The amount of schnitzel that had been consumed in Germany and Austria was unhealthy, but when in Germany/Austria!

Another quiet night in with a couple of beers and a viewing of the Sound of Music was a pretty nice and chilled way to spend the last night in Salzburg. We had a train to catch the next day south and into Slovenia.