In the City of Dreaming Spires: The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Music!

Travel Week Day 2
Salzburg, Austria to Innsbruck, Austria

This morning we had breakfast at our hostel, the Youth and Family Hostel in Salzburg. We stayed in an eight bed female dorm. Our dormmates included a girl from Australia, a girl from Davis, California, and two girls from Japan. The Japanese girl in the bunk below mine studied abroad at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon for 10 months, and the two Japanese girls realized that they had gone to the same university in Japan at the same time but never met! It’s crazy how small the world can be and how interconnected everyone is. Breakfast was croissants and rolls with multiple flavored jams, meats, cheese, hardboiled eggs, cucumbers, yogurt, and cereal. I was pretty impressed and thrilled to have free coffee!

We took a bus to the Mirabell Gardens to take a “Sound of Music” bicycle tour, but when we arrived we found that it had closed for the season. We walked through the gardens and took pictures in front of the fountain where Maria and the children sing “Do Re Mi” and the arbor arches where the children run. We decided to join a “Sound of music” four hour bus tour instead. Our guide wore traditional dress and told stories about the “Sound of Music” and the real life Von Trapp family. The bus played the entire movie soundtrack throughout the tour, and we all sang along. We stopped at sights such as the gazebo, wedding chapel, and the palace used as the Von Trapp residence. Our bus tour took us out of Salzburg and into the lake areas to the towns of Gilgen and Mondsee. We stopped at one point to toboggan down a hill on a metal chute after being pulled up by a rope. The views were incredible, and the weather couldn’t have been more perfect! Two American ladies on the tour forgot their cameras, so I took pictures and will email them to them once we’re home.

After the tour we walked across the river back into Old Town and bought pretzels again for lunch. I also bought a slice of a loaf of meat made of pork and beef and served on bread from a festival vendor. At this point, we ran into Melanie and McKenna! They were supposed to be on our flight to Salzburg, but after we arrived at the airport yesterday morning, they realized that their flight had actually been booked for today! They spent a few hours in Salzburg today before continuing on to Germany. With the hustle and bustle of the festival, we couldn’t believe that we ran into them!

We hiked the hill up to the fortress overlooking Salzburg and had amazing views of the city! Amy didn’t want to pay the fortress admission fee, so Jenn and I toured it together. The fortress was built in 1077 and stands today as one of the best-preserved and largest medieval castles in Europe. The fortress was essentially like its own city within walls. The view was AMAZING! Inside, we got to see a collection of weaponry, musical instruments, and even marionettes! Our visit ended with an audio tour up to one of the top towers and a walk past the Salzburg Stier Barrel Organ known as the “Salzburg Bull”. It was installed as a form of siren and alarm clock for the town in 1500. Its strange organ sound, reminiscent of a bull roaring, was audible in town three times a day for 500 years to inform inhabitants of the time of day.

We met Amy in town, walked back to our hostel to pick up our backpacks, and caught a bus back to the train station. From there, we took a train to Innsbruck, Austria and two buses to our campsite. We had to wait at the stop for 20 minutes between buses, so we played “Go Fish” in the dark. This was the only time we really felt unsafe during our travels, but luckily our second bus came as scheduled. Every bus stop in Innsbruck had an electronic display listing the buses that were scheduled with their numbers, destinations, and time until arrival. It was so nice! We checked into our “caravan” (travel trailer) and went to sleep.