Salzburg - Sound of Music!

"The hills are alive with the sound of music

With songs they have sung for a thousand years

The hills fill my heart with the sound of music

My heart wants to sing every song it hears"

My visit to "Sound of Music" Land, though short, was a fantastic one!

Right after school on a sunny Friday afternoon, we SCOOTED off to the train station, and arrived in Salzburg after a 5-hr journey from St Gallen. (I love travelling by train. You get a comfortable seat and a good view through the large windows...it's probably the best way to travel around Europe!)

Oh and Ems, this photo is for you :) Doggie riding a train!

Janelle and I - being such good navigators (!!) - found our way to the youth hostel effortlessly haha :)

There's a free screening of the Sound of Music movie every night at the hostel too. Cool huh :) So all the tourists and Sound of Music fans can sit down and d0 a little "recap" of the songs and scenes before going for the tour the next day!

Early the next morning, we left for the much-anticipated Sound of Music tour! Do some of these scenes look familiar? :) Ems, go watch the Sound of Music again and see if you can identify these places!

Later in the afternoon, we also went for a tour of a salt mine (salt mining was a major source of revenue for Austria in the past). This tour was such an experience! We were dressed up in grey mining suits, took rides through kilometres of dark mining tunnels, slid down steep slopes, and crossed a lake on a raft. Almost felt as if we were in some theme park!

The tours also took us to 2 charming little towns - one by the Lake Mondsee, and another town called Berchtesgaden (this is actually a border town in Germany).

And of course not forgetting the breathtaking mountains and lakes that accompanied us everywhere. Indeed, every turn the bus made along the winding mountain road presented us with yet another mountain peak, another castle perched on a hill, another beautiful lake.

"The hills are alive with the sound of music
With songs they have sung for a thousand years
The hills fill my heart with the sound of music
My heart wants to sing every song it hears

My heart wants to beat like the wings of the birds that rise from the lake to the trees

My heart wants to sigh like a chime that flies from a church on a breeze

To laugh like a brook when it trips and falls overstones on its way

To sing through the night like a lark who is learning to pray

I go to the hills when my heart is lonely

I know I will hear what I've heard before
My heart will be blessed with the sound of music

And I'll sing once more"