'The hills are alive with the sound of music...'

Wednesday 24 June (cont.)

There was a bit of a mix up with the tour bus picking us up from the station so we had to grab a taxi to take us to the Sound of Music (SoM) bus. Our very lively guide was Natasha and she led us on a four-hour drive and walk around many of the places where the SoM movie was filmed.

At the Leopoldskron Lake we discovered that two different houses were used as Baron von Trapp's home, one filmed as the facade of the house and the other (at the lake) for shots from the house to the garden and lake.

St Leopoldskron - used for lakeside and garden scenes

The gazebo was constructed at the lake for the film but the property owners strggled to cope with all the fans who came to visit it, so it was moved to Hellbrunn Castle gardens and we saw it there.

The outside scenes of Maria at the convent were shot at Nonnberg Abbey, just below the Hohensalzburg Fortress.

We drove to the spectacular scenery around Lake Fuschi where the opening scenes of the movie were shot and back to the Wolfgangsee, where we had been in the morning. We had a very clear view of the Schafberg and could even see the hotel where we had stayed, perched high on the mountain. No cloud now!

The final stop was at Mondsee where Maria and the Baron were married in the Basilica of St Michael. This cathedral is full of Baroque masterpieces - at least twelve altars in side chapels and a magnificent main altar.

In the bus on the way back to Salzburg we enjoyed a DVD with excerpts from the SoM movie and current views of the places where they had been filmed which we had just visited, an interesting way to complete the tour.

After tea at the station, we caught the 6.56pm train to Munich and then the 8.50 train back to Nuremberg. We were pleased with our two-day excursion even if the expected views had proven to be elusive.