Today we got Meir to watch the boys and we headed out to Salzburg. My mom wanted to do the Sound of Music tour since who knows how long. The tour started at 2pm, so we headed out around 10:30. We hit some traffic as we left town and wasn’t sure how long it was going to last. Michael is so impatient when it comes to sitting in traffic and he always has a doom-and-gloom attitude about it. Luckily, there were some breaks in the traffic that made us continue on, instead of turning around or finding another way. The bad news though, was the bad weather. It started to rain (not really hard), but it was cloudy and it seemed like the hills would not be alive. We contemplated cancelling the tour and going to the salt mines of Berchtesgaten, since that didn’t matter wheather we were in rain or not, but decided to eat lunch in Salzburg and then decide what to do.

It took us awhile to get into the town center, and by the time we were on foot, it was already 1:15. We were supposed to be at the office at around 1:45. We had to get something to eat, because we wouldn’t get a chance until 6pm, so we picked up some awful hot dogs. I hate the hot dogs here, the casings on them are too tough. And the guy really overdid it with the mustard.

We made it to the office at 1:45 and patiently waited. We bought some books about the real von Trapp family, as well as a Sound of Music keepsake book, and read it while we waited. At around 2, we got in a van with 3 other people and the driver and headed out. The first place we went was Mirabell gardens and it was very beautiful there and you could recognize the steps where the kids sang Do-Re-Mi. Michael cut his leg as he tried to show off and scale the wall to take a picture. Then we hopped back in the van and drove all around Salzburg and saw some other sights. After about 2 hours, we headed into the Lake District to see the hills. I was pretty disappointed that we didn’t go to the actual meadow where she was in the opening scene singing “the hills are alive”. We just drove around. I was a little car sick so I slept a little and didn’t see really anything. We did, however, stop at a toboggan ride, and me and Michael convinced my mom to go up with us. My dad didn’t want to. It was really fun and my mom really liked it. At the bottom, she said “can we go again?” Sadly, they were closing up and we couldn’t go. Then we went to a coffee shop and had apple strudel and ice cream. It was ok.

My mom and dad were happy with the tour, but I was kind of disappointed. I think we should’ve cut off the whole driving to the lake district since we didn’t even go to the meadow, and spent more walking time in Salzburg. We could’ve gone to the gates of the Nonnburg Abbey, got out and saw more stuff. But I guess they want to make it easy as possible on everyone, old and young. Or maybe they should make an “active version” of the tour where there’s more walking. Also, a lot of the sites are private property and you can’t go on the grounds which is kind of disappointing. Of course they don’t tell you this fact in their brochure. They make like you actually go there.

We also didn’t have time to walk around by ourselves, we had to head straight home. Oh well, we’ll come back sometime with the boys and spend more time doing other things.

When we got home, I convinced my parents to go out with Michael to the Höfbräuhaus and I got to eat portugese sausage and rice at home. They, unfortunately, had an awful time. There was a long line to eat there, so they went across and tried a Japanese place. It turned out that their food wasn’t good - they used minute rice and whatever my parents ate was horrible. The beer wasn’t to my dad’s liking, but Michael had an ok meal. I felt so bad for kicking them out, but thought they would really enjoy eating there. Sorry, mom and dad!