Tempest in a Teapot

SO, I’m back from Austria. Mom & I had a great time – we loved Salzburg! (Vienna was nice too, but not nearly as quaint as Salzburg.) Vienna does have one of the most incredible museums I have even been to – the Koonts. It would have to rank as my 2nd favorite museum, right behind the British Museum in London. Some of their items have to be seen in person to be believed – for instance, the Gemma Augustea boggles the mind with the detail and workmanship involved in making it. No photo does it justice.

Also while we were in Vienna: we wandered around the Hofburg Palace (I toured the treasury, I’m a sucker for crown jewels), visited St. Stephen’s (the cathedral) and took in a morning practice of the famous Lipizzaner Stallions at the Spanish Riding School.

But we LOVED Salzburg – we took two tours while we were there: the Sound of Music tour, which took us to many of the places where the movie was filmed, and the Eagle’s Nest tour. The Eagle’s Nest is back across the border in Germany near Berchtesgaden.

Here’s mom & me at the Eagle’s Nest. The views were amazing.

Here I am standing on the steps where they filmed the “Do-Re-Mi” song. Remember at the very end of the song where the kids are hopping up and down on the steps as they sing different notes while Julie steadily moves up the scale & the steps? Well, that was RIGHT where I am standing. The tour was totally schmaltzy, but we all sang along to the songs and had a wonderful time doing it. Yes, I am a dork.

In addition to a silly Hollywood musical, Salzburg is famous because Mozart was born there. We toured the house where he was born & a second home across the river where he grew up (neither or which were worth the money – don’t bother) and also went into the Cathedral where he was the organ master for several years. The cathedral took my breath away – I loved it. Turns out that Mozart’s life wasn’t quite like the movie, but he was a bit bawdy & probably would have been lots of fun to get a beer with.

(view the flickr set. or if you’re really bored, you can view all 100+ photos)

Next up on our travel schedule: Normany for D-day.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 18th, 2007 at 12:34 am and is filed under Photos, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.