Our Trip to Bachfest and beyond - Part 4

After our group left Leipzig the morning after Bachfest ended, the two of us embarked on what I knew would be the best part of our trip - 5 days in Austria!

Our first stop was Salzburg, and we were so glad that a) we had used Rail Europe to prebook our train seats, b) we were staying at a hotel a short walk from the train station and c) we had learned our way around the train station the previous week. We took the train from Leipzig to Munich, and after a quick track change, continued on the 2nd train from Munich to Salzburg. The whole trip took a little more than 5 hours and the scenery was lovely.

We took a quick cab ride from the Salzburg train station to our gorgeous hotel - The Sheraton Grand Salzburg.

The Hotel was one I didn’t want to leave - Pictures of the garden restaurant and our champagne gift (with chocolates and a handwritten note from Management) are below. As you’ll see by the website link, the Marriott, again, does not disappoint. We got settled, visited the lobby bar (where Steve provided martini-making-instruction) and then had dinner in the restaurant. We had our bottle of champagne, and got to bed early, since we had a full day coming up!

https://www.marriott.com/en-us/hotels/szgsi-sheraton-grand-salzburg/overview/

The next day was the one we had been looking forward to the most, and it was even better than expected. I had booked the Original Sound of Music tour and tour of Salzburg through Panorama Tours Salzburg. What are the odds that a couple has the same favourite movie?

This tour was amazing and made for us. It was only a few hours, the people were fun, and everything we learned was interesting. We learned to distinguish between settings used in the movie that weren’t part of the real Von Trapp story, and other settings that were part of the real story but not the movie.

https://www.panoramatours.com/en/salzburg/tour/original-sound-of-music-tour-tour-1a-28/

The tour began after a 5 minute walk from the hotel, where we met the bus. The pics below show the tour guide, the gorgeous scenery on the drive, the view of the back of the house that was used as the Captain’s house in the movie, the path where Julie Andrews sings “I Have Confidence”, the gazebo where “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” and “Something Good” were filmed, and the gorgeous view entering the Lake District on our way to Mondsee. That scene came into view on the bus as we were listening to Julie Andrews singing the movie’s theme song. I’ll admit it, I cried. It was gorgeous. Another thing we learned is that Red Bull’s Headquarters is in Salzburg, and they contributed substantially to the restoration of the gazebo.

The pictures below were taken in the little town of Mondsee. Mondsee is famous for its Cathedral, officially Basilika St. Michael, and is a famous former monastery church. It’s where the wedding of Maria and Captain Von Trapp was filmed. Although I like the pics I took, they really don’t do it justice. Seeing the organ pipes and the altar brought me to tears, again, because they’re in my favourite scenes of the movie. This tour made June 24th my favourite day of the year, and one of my best ever.

The tour concluded at The Mirabell Palace, which we hadn’t realized was right next to our hotel! The outdoor dining area at our hotel (pictured above) has a pathway that leads to the Palace Gardens. The most famous part of the Gardens is “The Zwergerlgarten [dwarf garden] (which) dates from the reign of Archbishop Johann Ernst Graf Thun. Originally comprising 28 dwarfs of white Untersberg marble, it is the oldest dwarf garden in Europe. 17 of the original dwarfs are still preserved. The Garden is one of the principal settings in the Hollywood musical The Sound of Music. In the film, Maria and the children dance around the Pegasus fountain behind Mirabell Palace, singing the song "Do-Re-Mi". https://www.salzburg.info/en/sights/top10/mirabell-palace-gardens (pics below)

After the tour, we got ready for dinner, which was part of a package I bought months before. It was for dinner and a concert at a palace. I hadn’t clued in that a) dinner was actually at our hotel, and b) the concert was inside the Mirabell Palace that we had just seen on the Sound of Music Tour! Dinner was outdoors and the menu is on the link below. After dinner, we walked through the gardens of the hotel and the palace, entered the palace, and explored before entering the Marble Hall for the concert.

https://www.salzburg-palace-concerts.com/sheraton-dinner-and-concert.html

The concert program and pics of the room are shown below. It was almost an all-Mozart concert, in a room WHERE MOZART HAD ACTUALLY PLAYED!!! Just nuts. The concert was played by a string quartet and sometimes a quintet, where the added musician was playing a 5 string cello. We were sitting in the front row and the performance was fabulous.