Day 13: Salzburg - Sound of Music tour

While it may sound cheesy, we took the Sound of Music tour by bike to see the sites where the movie was filmed and also the historically accurate sites where the Von Trapp family story actually played out. Turns out the movie sticks to the truth pretty well, with some interesting changes here and there. Most Austrians actually haven't seen the movie and don't know what all the fuss is about. And at the time of filming - not long after WW II - you can bet the locals weren't too excited to wake up to find swastikas hanging from the town square for filming purposes.

The tour was great; it was a beautiful day and was really as much of a Salzburg sights and history tour as it was about the SOM. We had a great guide from Copenhagen and a small group and saw more interesting and off-the-beaten-path things than we could have ever seen on our own. Now we want to go back and re-watch the movie that neither of us has watched nice we were kids to see all the places we visited.

Interesting fact: The famous gazebo where Liesl sings "I am 16" was given to Salzburg after filming [read: the studio didn't want to transport it back to the states]. Salzburg doesn't really care much about the gazebo (since they dont understand the movie fascination) and had to move it 11 times in 10 years because wherever it goes, tourists find it and dance around, causing a ruckus. They finally put it in a public park and had to lock the doors because people slipped when it was wet and tried to sue the city. Silly tourists.

The photo is a small mansion on the outskirts of town (you can see Hohensalzburg in the background) that was used for the back of the Von Trapp mansion. This is the lake in which they tipped the boat over. The filmmakers actually used a different Salzburg mansion for the front of the house.