Hamburg, Germany (1 Day Itinerary)

After a less than fabulous experience in Frankfurt, saved by a last minute excursion to Rudesheim, I was a little nervous about our upcoming plans for Hamburg. We gave ourselves a full day to get from Frankfurt to Hamburg due to the sheer amount of driving. Let me first show you our driving map again. We took a ferry from Denmark to Germany at the beginning of our trip after spending a day in Copenhagen. Then we drove in a big (oddly shaped) circle that got us back into Denmark on the western/land side.

The drive from Frankfurt to Hamburg alone was over 5 hours, so we planned two pit stops at some gorgeous looking castles. When you plan a big trip like this, you do it over the course of several months, not realizing that everything you planned would be seen and experienced over the course of 2 weeks. What I mean, is that when you plan a trip, the key to a successful holiday is diversity! That's not to say that this trip to Denmark, Austria and Germany didn't have lots of diversity, but at the same time...it also had way too many castles. Granted, I LOVE castles, but even by the end of the trip, I didn't need to see that many more. Unfortunately, when you have a 5 hour drive between 2 major cities in a foreign country where you don't speak the language, your sightseeing options are relatively limited.

Our first stop for the day came about and hour and a half after leaving Frankfurt. We arrived at Eltz Castle still owned and lived in by the Eltz family. I find this exceptionally cool! We took the guided English tour that showed us some of the older parts of the castle (obviously not the current living apartments), and then got back on the road. What I especially liked about this castle is that you could get really awesome views of the entire thing by taking a little walk up the hill.

Eltz Castle

The next castle (Loverin Castle) was about three hours away from Eltz. We stopped for gas and grabbed some gas station lunch and continued on our way. Now, you have to realize that at this point in the trip, we started suffering from travel fatigue. That's only natural when you go anywhere for 10+ days and do as much driving around as we did. City after city, castle after castle...driving, driving, endlessly driving. I honestly don't know how my husband did it.

So, we neared the next castle, but missed the entrance for parking which was a bit of a walk from the castle itself. We could have easily turned around, parked and continued with our visit, but the day had turned a little rainy and dreary, so instead we just gave up and decided to push through and continue to Hamburg.

We hadn't intended on spending another 3.5 hours in the car, but the drive to Hamburg proved difficult thanks to traffic and construction. Those German autobahns can be speed limit-less but when there's construction, you find yourself going 45 MPH with the rest of the cars on the road.

Weary eyed and exhausted, we arrived in Hamburg. We found the ARCOTEL Onyx easily, and were pleased with the underground parking garage and keycard elevators. The hotel advertised as being in the "Theater District" and as we exited the hotel to find dinner, we quickly realized that "Theater District" is apparently synonymous with "Red Light District" in Hamburg. Lord have mercy! We certainly did not expect THAT.

Prostitution is legal in Germany, but up until now, we saw very little overt signs. Perhaps our other hotels were in better parts of town. Not that our Hamburg hotel was in a bad part of town. There were families with children all over the place, and our hotel room faced a children's playground. We also saw signs for the Lion King...it was unfortunately right next to a brothel that advertised their "services" for the bargain price of 30 Euros. As we walked down the street, it was obvious to us that while this particular neighborhood was trying to become the theater district, the red light district still dominated. Shop after shop after shop tried soliciting new customers to enter their "adult" shops, gentlemen's clubs, etc. It was more than awkward. (Side note. When we visited Bangkok, Thailand a few years later, we made a point to avoid the infamous Thai red light district though looking back, I think it would have been interesting to compare the two.)

Perhaps our American prudery got the better of us. We dashed into the first dining establishment we could find (a Burger King), and then quickly retreated to the comforts of our hotel for the evening.

We only had about a half day of activities planned in Hamburg because we had more driving ahead of us in order to make it across the Danish border by dinnertime. The first stop for the day was a place called the "Minature Wunderland" in the warehouse district. This part of Hamburg still has many of the historic buildings used for the massive shipping industry for which the city is known. I encourage you to read about the Hamburg fires during World War II. Interesting story.

Hamburg Warehouse District

Even if you're not into model trains and train platforms, the "Minature Wunderland" is really neat. The trains were only a very small part of the massive displays. The miniature cities and towns impressed me the most. They had European cities, old fashioned carnivals, small towns, and even a section to the United States (my least favorite part actually as it really only featured New York City and Las Vegas). There was even a miniature chocolate factory with a button visitors could push that spit out a real piece of chocolate. As a child who loved doll houses, I simply loved this miniature display. My in-laws weren't as impressed with it as I was, however. I think it just depends on your personal taste. The place does get really crowded, so try to get there early. Watch their website too for peak times to avoid when lines and crowds are at their worst. We visited on a Monday morning in August, and we were fine.

Minature Wunderland - Hamburg, Germany

Minature Wunderland - Hamburg, Germany

After the Minature Wunderland, we made our way further into the more modern area of Hamburg to a placed called the Chocoversum. I read a lot of reviews about this place before we visited. Many of the reviewed warned that the tours were all in German, but that it was still worth visiting. I was definitely wary of that, but we decided to go anyway. We arrived to catch the 10:15 tour, and true to the reviews, the tour was completely in German. They did give us a laminated English guidebook that went into pretty good detail about everything that we were seeing, but even after we finished reading the English portion, the tour continued on for 10+ minutes at each stop completely in German. Our guide, however, did speak English and after she finished talking in German, she came over to us and covered quickly in English, whatever wasn't covered in the book.

Aside from getting to make our own chocolate bars, the best part of the tour was getting to taste different things throughout the whole chocolate making process. First was the raw seed from the cacao plant which had a very bitter, herbal taste. We then could taste the inside of the bean after the defermentation process and again after the roasting process. Only after the roasting did it even begin tasting like what we think chocolate should taste like.

The next chocolate samples were melted. The first one was after the chocolate is first mixed with sugar, but still very dark. The second was the milk chocolate powder. Third was a sample of the milk and dark chocolates on a wafer. Lastly, they gave us a sample of chocolate after it's packaged for shipping.

Cacao pod with edible seeds

Proportions when making dark, milk, and white chocolate

Making our own candy bars

We retrieved our personalized candy bars at the end of the tour, and then proceeded to do some massive souvenir shopping. The gift shop not only had ever type of chocolate you could imagine eating including super dark and flavored chocolates, but they also had every manner of chocolate scented products. I really enjoyed this place and highly recommend visiting if you're ever in Hamburg. Quick note, the visit wasn't long either. I mentioned that we took the 10:15 tour, and we were finished by lunchtime.

We found a quick bite to eat (and not a terribly good one, if I recall), at a little street-side cafe. On our way out of the city, we made one last stop at a place called the "Port of Dreams" aka the Hamburg immigration port. Here, thousands and thousands of immigrants left Germany and sailed to America. We took a look inside the main building itself and then took advantage of the research computers they had with free access to Ancestry.com. I wish I had been more prepared for that to look up more information about my own family heritage.

Hamburg - Port of Dreams

From the immigration port, we packed back into the car and hunkered down for another long drive. Fortunately, the winds and traffic were in our favor, and we experienced the true meaning of the notorious German autobahn on our way back to Denmark.

German autobahn - 180 kph

Thanks for reading!

- Foxy the Traveler

Frankfurt, Germany & Rudesheim on the Rhine

I realize that I left you all with a bit of a cliff hanger at the end of my last post. Having just come from the lovely town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber, and the quaint Black Forest towns of Freiburg and Triberg, we weren't quite prepared to wind up back in a big, bustling city. Perhaps this blog post should be titled, "What do to when you have a whole day planned and you suddenly decide to change it." That just seems a bit wordy though. Haha!

Unfortunately, that's exactly what happened. We arrived in Frankfurt after spending the day in Rothenburg ob der Tauber, and we quickly realized that we just didn't want to spend a whole day and a half here like we planned. Instead, we condensed our sightseeing of Frankfurt into half a day, and found another quaint little town just a short drive away. 

Frankfurt didn't necessarily start off on the wrong foot. We arrived at our hotel, Fleming's Hotel Frankfurt-Main Riverside. (Fleming's has a few hotels in Frankfurt, FYI). The hotel was lovely. Don't let the glass enclosed shower in the middle of the room throw you. We read a bunch of reviews before we booked from people that were shocked and appalled that a hotel would put the shower in the middle of the room, but it didn't bother us. The hotel was within walking distance of many things to see in Frankfurt like the cathedral, the Romans and the city tram. 

Almost immediately after checking in, we headed out to visit the Cathedral of St. Bartholomew. This is a very interesting place to visit. Construction on this cathedral started in the 700s but was not officially finished until 1994. They have a picture inside that shows the years and the progress, though I'm not sure if my picture of the picture below does it justice. 

Cathedral of St. Bartholomew

Frankfurt, Germany

Evolution of the Cathedral

The Cathedral of St. Bartholomew is lovely, but I'm afraid the duomos and churches of Italy have ruined me forever. The castles in southern Germany are equally as incredible in their own right, but the cathedral in Frankfurt seemed less than impressive after everything else we'd seen so far on this trip.

Maybe we were just hungry? Maybe that's why Frankfurt didn't strike us as a more pleasant city when we first arrived. (Or maybe it's because the only thoughts I've ever had of Frankfurt were from the 1930s Shirley Temple movie Heidi, where they have scenes in Frankfurt at Christmastime in the 1800s with horses and real sleigh rides. Oddly enough, that's not the Frankfurt we saw in August of 2013.)

Dinner only further soured our experience in Frankfurt. We found a nice looking outdoor cafe, but all four of us couldn't stand the thought of more bratwurst. Three of the four of us ordered the smoked salmon appetizer which wasn't terrible, but the heat made turned the cold salmon warm very quickly. My husband's dinner took the cake! Not one, not two, not three...not four...but FIVE different types of pickled herring. THIS was a meal that went down in history. Imagine a perfectly normal fish...pickled, and then slathered in some sort of mayonnaise based sauce. Each sauce supposedly had a different flavor...ick! Even the memory makes me want to gag.

What exactly was the butter for?

We left dinner and headed back to our hotel disheartened. The last thing we wanted was to spend an entire day in this weird place. Maybe if we had started in Frankfurt, it wouldn't have been so bad. Or maybe even if we came to Frankfurt right after Berlin, we may have thought better of it. But spending several days in Austria and southern Germany with quaint villages and beautiful castles, returning to a modern city caused more of a shock than we expected.

So, we spent the last few hours of the evening coming up with a plan B. We had two activities the next day in Frankfurt that we didn't want to miss, but after that, we wanted to go somewhere... anywhere else. Hurray for free hotel wifi! My in-laws found a small wine town nearby called Rudesheim that sat right along the Rhine river. Rudesheim had a sightseeing triangle (similar to Miyajima in Japan) which sounded like a much better way to spend our afternoon.

The next morning, we enjoyed breakfast at the hotel. Upon first glance, it looked like they only had bread and fruit, but then around the corner they had cold meats and cheeses. As soon as we sat down to eat, a waiter came over and offered us made to order eggs as well.

Before the trip, I got us timed tickets to go to a place called the Blind Museum. They have a few of these around the world, where they give you the experience of a blind person. Our tickets were for 11AM, so before that, we headed to the Frankfurt Romans.

The Frankfurt Romans are, without a doubt, the most famous place for tourists in the whole city. It's a pedestrian square with buildings designed to look old. At one point, they actually were old, but they were destroyed during the war and only rebuilt in recent years. Another example of the devastation of war. I appreciated that Frankfurt rebuilt the Romans, but at the same time, I knew I was looking at a "replica". Again, how can you compare something that's been rebuilt to the original 11th century structure that's still standing in Italy or Kyoto?

Frankfurt Romans

The Blind Museum was a very unique experience. They set the museum inside the rain forest in Brazil, and gave us each a walking stick. At one point, we all sat down and listened to the various sounds while our guides explained how our ears began compensating for our lack of vision. I really enjoyed this place though I sort of wished they made it simpler. I would have rather gone through a house set up, to learn how blind people get around their home. That, to me, would have been more interesting than being blind in the rain forest, but I still don't regret visiting.

After the blind museum, we took the tram back to our hotel, and drove an hour to Rudesheim. We took two different chair lifts and a boat down the Rhine river itself. The chair lifts were beautiful and breezy, but the boat ride was incredibly hot. Still, I enjoyed this place much more than Frankfurt.

At the top of the first chair lift before taking the little trail to the next one, we were surprised with a nice cultural dance performance.

After the boat ride, we found a little restaurant for dinner. Honestly, I have no idea what the place looked like, but I do remember being so excited that they had other menu options besides bratwurst. My husband got pork chops, my in-laws got weinerschnitzle, and I got pesto pasta. Yum!

We then drove the hour back to Frankfurt elated from finding such a gem at the last minute. We turned in early knowing that the last few days of our trip involved a lot of driving (ha...as if we haven't already driven a lot so far), in order to get back to Denmark. And I must say...if Frankfurt wasn't our cup of tea...Hamburg certainly wasn't either, though after the shock of Frankfurt, we handled Hamburg a little better. We were taken a bit by surprise, however, when the theater district (where we thought we were staying) turned out to also be the red light district. Live and learn. Click HERE to keep reading.

Thanks for reading!

- Foxy the Traveler

Rothenburg ob der Tauber - Germany's Christmas town

From deep in the heart of Germany's Black Forest, we drove north toward Frankfurt stopping half way at one of the most enchanting little towns I've ever been to. The place initially reminded me of Lucca in Italy with its original city walls and oodles of charm. But unlike the ancient Tuscan village, Rothenburg ob der Tauber had an extra magical touch.

We left the Black Forest around 9AM on Thursday, August 15. We flew to Denmark on August 5, so we're 10 days into the trip. We took our time driving to Rothenburg ob der Tauber. As we neared Saxony, we arrived at Hohenzollern Castle after an hour and 45 mins of driving. We decided not to tour the castle (after a while, they all start to blend together), but we did spend an hour or so walking the grounds and indulging on some local ice cream that tasted like a fruit roll-up. 

Hohenzollern Castle

Arial view of Hohenzollern Castle

We then drove another 45 mins or so to the Lichtenstein Castle. Again, we didn't go in. Instead, we walked the grounds and got some bratwurst for lunch at the castle cafe. 

Lichtenstein Castle

We took a little break from castle hopping to visiting the small German town of Musberg. It took us about another hour to drive there from Lichtenstein Castle, but prior to the trip, the other couple we traveled with had traced some of their family history back to this small town. We stopped at the historic Lutheran church and strolled through a nearby cemetery though it was far too modern for the names we sought. 

After that last pitstop, we continued north around Stuttgart toward our final destination, Rothenburg ob der Tauber. Little did we know that by driving inside the city wall, we would be driving down cobblestone and highly traveled pedestrian streets. Immediately the beauty of this place hit us. We found our hotel, parked the car and took full advantage of this walkable little town. 

The Burgarten Palais is a stunningly beautiful hotel. The whole place reeks of charm though the rooms are modern. It felt more like a guest house than a hotel. We booked through hotels.com and the other couple traveling with us used booking.com. Both worked fine and both bookings came with breakfast. 

We ate dinner pretty soon after arriving and then took a twilight walk through the city gates. One of the delicacies in Rothenburg ob der Tauber is schneeballen. Schneeballen is a crunchy, tasty delight. They're made with small pieces of dough baked together and then covered in delicious toppings. I'm finding it difficult to describe, so I'll let my pictures do the talking. 

Schneeballen

Rothenburg ob der Tauber city gates

The next morning we started off the day with scrambled eggs, cold breakfast meats, fruit, and fresh bread. We then set out to explore this magical town. Even in August, we soon discovered that the shops of Rothenburg ob der Tauber love Christmas. 

Our first stop was a toy and doll museum with a large display of doll houses. From there, we went to probably the largest Christmas store I've ever seen. I forced myself to stop at 4 ornaments though I could have easily purchased enough to decorates numerous trees. There is no place I wanted to photograph more, but I respectfully obeyed the "no photo" signs throughout the store.

We spent the rest of the afternoon walking about the town, in and out of shops. We indulged on some lemon cheesecake and coffee and vanilla cake for lunch at our hotel and met up to leave this lovely place around 3pm. It's a relatively small town. If you're just passing through, you really don't need to spend more than a day here, but it was truly a splendid day.

I got to chatting with a coworker years later about this charming little town, and he told me that it's an even more enchanting place to visit during Christmastime. I've often said throughout my travels, that I won't return to anywhere I've already gone until I've been everywhere else. Rothenburg ob der Tauber may be the exception. 

Most famous street in Rothenburg ob der Tauber

Back in the car, we bid farewell to Rothenburg ob der Tauber and made our way to Frankfurt in about 2 hours. Almost immediately, we realized that we made a terrible mistake! Click HERE to read about how we turns our plans completely upside-down.

Thanks for reading!

- Foxy the Traveler

Germany's Black Forest

Traveling to Germany's Black Forest is not for the faint of heart. It sits on Germany's southwestern edge near its border with France. If you drove to Freiburg (the main town in the Black Forest) directly from Munich, it would only take about 3.5 hours. We combined the drive with a stop at Neuschwanstein Castle (the castle that inspired Disney's Cinderella Castle) which adds an extra 2 hours to the drive. Getting out of the Black Forest up the western side of Germany isn't any faster. Again, it's about a 3.5 hour straight shot to Frankfurt, but we stopped for the night in Rothenburg ob der Tauber, making the total drive also about 5.5 hours. So...is it worth it? Well, that's for you to decide. If you want to see some of Germany's most iconic countryside, quaint towns, and storybook castles...then yes, it's worth it.

The weather for this trip was seriously all over the place. At the beginning of the trip in Copenhagen, we had temperatures in the 80s (very usual for Denmark even in August), but as the trip went on, the temps slowly dropped. By the time we got to the Black Forest, temperatures barely reached into the mid 60s. The only pair of capri pants that I brought got a lot of use.

We had a few goals today. Enjoy the scenery of the Black Forest, find the perfect cuckoo clock for my mother in law, and find the World's Largest cuckoo clock. We left our hotel in Freiburg around 9AM and set out for the small German town of Triberg. Only about 45 mins from Freiburg, Triberg is the home of the cuckoo clock. Although we didn't find the world's largest cuckoo clock immediately, we eventually came across 2 different ones that both claimed to the world's largest. Take a look for yourself and see if you can tell me which one is bigger.

In Triberg, we separated from the other couple with whom we traveled. They set off to find the perfect clock, and my husband and I explored this charming little town. We found some traditional German goulash for lunch and went on a short hike up to the Triberg waterfall. The signs claimed that it's the tallest waterfall in Germany which was a bit misleading. If you've ever seen a big waterfall before...this wasn't it. It did, however, have many different pieces to it that all connected which they then claimed was all part of one large waterfall. Ok sure, they got our money and we thought it was a lovely way to spend an hour or so.

From the waterfall, we walked around the little town for a while. We browsed some junk souvenir shops, stopped to split a delicious ice cream sundae and then found a Netto Discount Market (they're everywhere in Germany) to replenish our travel snacks. When we met back up with my in laws, we saw the cuckoo clock that they found before heading back to our hotel in Freiburg. We took the scenic route and discovered the true magic of the Black Forest.

Why is it called the Black Forest? Is the tree bark especially dark? That might seem like a silly question, but I really had no idea why they called it the Black Forest. It's difficult to tell from my pictures, but the particular pine trees that constitute the Black Forest grow so densely that no sunlight shines below them. The wood from these trees is used to make the famous Black Forest Cuckoo clocks, and cuckoo clocks littered the streets of Triberg.

Once back at the hotel, we walked to a outdoor restaurant, dined on some classic German cuisine and turned in early. On our way out of the Black Forest, we made a pit stop at the single most enchanting town in al of Germany: Rothenberg ob der Tauber. The only thing that could have made me love this little town more, would have been to visit it at Christmastime. Check it out HERE.

Thanks for reading!

- Foxy the Traveler

Travel to Freiburg and Germany's Cinderella Castle

After our short little stopover in Munich, Germany, we checked out of our hotel around 8:15AM, stopped for gas, and then drove about another 30 minutes to the Dachau former KZ Concentration Camp. We arrived before the visitor center opened, so we spend about 30 mins or so walking around the grounds. Unlike Mauthausen, that we visited when we first arrived in Austria, Dachau is huge! I don't think you can ever truly appreciate something until you're actually there and can see things for yourself. The barracks had all been destroyed, but they left the foundations marked, so you can see just how massive it was. I also really liked that they had historic photos posted throughout the former KZ Camp, so you could see what it looked like during the war compared to now.

Entrance to Dachau, former KZ Camp

From there we began our trek into the Black Forest region of Germany, a destination that we wouldn't reach until after several long hours of driving. To break up the day, we made several noteworthy stops.

After about 1.5 hours of driving, we made our first stop at a place called the Partnach Gorge. What a gem of a place! We added this to our itinerary rather last minute, and I'm so glad we did. A mean horse and buggy driver kept us from driving our car any closer to the entrance than the 1970s Olympic stadium which meant we had about a mile to a mile and a half walk ahead of us before we got to the actual entrance of the gorge.

To our delight, we found a little eatery after walking only 10-15 mins. I took special note of the restaurant's name because I knew I wouldn't remember it otherwise. Gashtoff Partnachlam. An elderly German lady who spoke lovely English helped us decipher the menu (somehow, I wound up with the same white sausage again. I also got pasta, so I chopped up the sausages and tossed them with the noodles). The inside of the restaurant, however, was something out of a fairytale. Picture the inside of "grandfather's" house in Heidi, or what you would envision inside a cottage in the Black Forest. All manner of trinkets, carvings and cuckoo clocks. Beer steins and dolls wearing lederhosen. My pictures don't do it justice.

Similarly my pictures of the Partnach Gorge pale in comparison to the experience. The icy water flowed through the gorge with a fierce intensity and with colors so vibrant. Never before have I seen such indescribable shades of green. Walking through the gorge was somewhat of an adventure itself. The inside temperature was several degrees cooler than the outside, and water constantly dripped on us. The dripping water made the path we walked on very slick, so we took extra caution. If you ever find yourself in Germany and want to do something a little outside the box, this place was incredible.

We then got back in the car and drove for about another hour to Germany's most famous castle: Neuschwanstein. We bought timed tickets ahead of time, and planned our day carefully so that we arrived with plenty of time to pick them up. You pick up the tickets at the bottom of the hill at the main ticketing center which serves both Neuschwanstein and the other castle in the same vicinity (both built by Mad King Ludwig). From the ticket booths, you can either walk the long, steep hill (about a mile) up to the entrance of Neuschwanstein, or they have a horse-drawn carriage option. My husband and I walked the hill, but the other couple took the carriage option.

At 4:55, we entered the English tour of the 16 finished rooms. Each room in the castle has a different theme, and despite the size and grandeur of the castle's exterior, much of the inside remains unfinished. In modern times, they converted the second floor into a cafe and gift shops. After our castle tour, we opted to take a bit of a hike down a path that leads to a foot bridge where you can get one of the most iconic photos of Neuschwanstein. After Dachau, Partnach Gorge, and the trek up the hill to the castle, my feet complained the whole way to the bridge, but the view was simply to die for. And on the opposite side of the bridge, we found a surprise waterfall, which delighted us even more.

We had an incredible but exhausting day to say the least, and ahead of us lay 3.5 hours of driving yet to do before we stopped for the night. We stopped along the way at a gas station/auto grill for some road food. I don't recommend the premade gouda sandwiches that my husband grabbed. I, on the other hand, grabbed a small pack of salami and a fresh roll and made my own delicious sandwich. With a better camera I may have been able to capture the incredible sunset that evening that I scarcely recall only thanks to my diary of the trip.

Four very weary Americans arrived at the Hotel Clarion Hershen deep in the heart of the Black Forest. Happy to be staying at a hotel for more than one night, we settled in to this charming little hotel in Freiburg and called it a day.

In my next post, I'll cover our exciting adventures in Germany's Black Forest including our hunt for the World's Largest Cuckoo Clock and the magical little town of Rothenberg ob der Tauber. Click HERE to continue reading.

Thanks for reading!

- Foxy the Traveler

Salzburg, Austria - The hills are alive.... (1 Day Itinerary)

The hills are alive...with the sound of Salzburg! After a disappointing day in Vienna, I was so worried that we would encounter the same sort of thing in Salzburg. I had been looking forward to our day in Salzburg for weeks, months years! I've wanted to visit Salzburg ever since I was a little girl. I grew up watching The Sound of Music, and it is still one of my favorite movies of all time. Now that I was finally here, I was so scared that things would be closed and deserted like they were in Vienna. Thankfully, Salzburg caters to tourists ALL times of the year, even in the middle of August. We picked our hotel based on its walking proximity to everything we wanted to see plus the price and reviews. We could have easily stayed at a hotel in central Salzburg, but those were much more expensive. The Hotel Imlauer Altstadt by Best Western ended up being just over $200 with taxes, and since we only stayed for one night, it was well worth it to be able to walk everywhere.

Salzburg isn't a big place and if you're just hitting the highlights like us, it's easy to see in a single day...or even less than a day. Looking back, it would have been nice to have spent a weekend there to just wander aimlessly and explore some of the hidden mysteries and marvels that surround this incredible historic city.

Guess what time we woke up?? You guess it. Early! I probably spent more time planning this single day than I spent on any other day of the entire trip x2. It was my goal to see as many of the spots where they filmed The Sound of Music as possible, in addition to some actual other historic sights (i.e. Mozart was also born here). To start off the day, we visited the Mirabell Gardens, just steps from our hotel where they filmed the musical number, "Do Re Mi". It was great getting there so early because it wasn't yet crowded, and I was able to get some silly shots of myself pretending to be Maria VonTrapp.

After that we strolled past the famous fountain in Residenz Square where they filmed the beginning of the musical number, "I Have Confidence". Fun fact: that musical number was written specifically for the movie, and is not in the original Broadway version of the show.

We took a few minutes to visit the Salzburg Cathedral and St. Peter's cemetery that inspired the flight scene, but those actual scenes from the movie were filmed on a Hollywood movie set. Still, the cathedral is rather small but beautiful, and the cemetery is equally worth visiting since you're right there.

From there, we walked to the Hohensalzburg Fortress. When you drive into Salzburg, it's the first image you see. It's this incredible structure that looks like it was built from the Austrian mountains themselves. This visit had absolutely nothing to do with The Sound of Music, but it's still a very cool place to visit (it's one of the largest Medieval castles in all of Europe) and a great long hike if you're up for it.

Hohensalzburg Fortress on the top of the hill 

On our way back down, we stopped at Nonnberg Abbey. We weren't able to go in, but once again, the interior shots of Nonnberg Abbey in the movie were done on a movie set. But...BUT, the coolest, most awesome thing about this place is that it's where the REAL Maria Kutschera was a postulate before she became the governess of the Trapp children. This picture below was a lucky find. We were walking along the side of Nonnberg Abbey and we came to this small intersection. Do you recognize it? Think of Part II of the movie, after Maria has left and gone back to the abbey. A few minutes later, they show the VonTrapp children walking down the road toward the abbey to go and find her, and this is the very road where they filmed that scene. Yes, I was a little obsessed, but it was such a fun day!! Think of how many tourists go to New Zealand now to see where the movie The Lord of the Rings was filmed. Well, Salzburg and the filming of The Sound of Music is my Lord of the Rings. Go ahead...I'll wait while you laugh. Don't worry...it gets worse. :)

Outside Nonnberg Abbey

After the abbey, we got some traditional Austrian cuisine for lunch, schnitzel (no, not with noodles...I know how disappointed you are right now) with potatoes. The schnitzel was so delicious. It's basically a pork chop, pounded to about a half inch thickness, breaded and fried. So good! Ok, back to the SoM.

Think back to the very end of the movie. The VonTrapp Family Singers are performing in a concert right before they escape. As I was doing my research, I found out that the theater where they filmed the concert scene actually exists. It's called the Felsenreitschule (Rock Riding School), and the Trapp children in real life, also performed many concerts here. They have daily tours there at 2pm, but after lunch (an early lunch) it wasn't even close to being 2:00 yet, so rather than wait around for another 60-90 minutes for the tour, we just snuck in early. There were a whole bunch of students coming and going carrying musical instruments, and when we walked in, we saw the beginning of a rehearsal starting on the stage. Feeling a little awkward and out of place, I took a few quick pictures, and we left. That was the last place I wanted to see in "downtown" Salzburg, but there were still a few more stops on my SoM tour.

Felsenreitschule - Salzburg, Austria

Before leaving Salzburg for the day, we strolled past the birthplace of Mozart (that was positively mobbed with people), bought a Christmas ornament and some other trinkets before meeting up with the other couple we were traveling with. The last 3 stops on the SoM tour were some of the most important in my book.

The first stop was a little tricky to find. We had to follow some directions of a fellow SoM fan that we found online to help us find the back of the VonTrapp house or the Leopoldskron Palace. After watching the movie since the trip, I actually had a tough time trying to locate this image. I think it might be in the aerial scene in the very beginning. It backs to a pond, and we met some friendly swans on our walk.

Then we drove to the Hellbrunner Allee where Maria sings more of, "I Have Confidence" through the trees as she arrives at the VonTrapp house. The historic pedestrian street still leads up to the building that served as the façade of the VonTrapp manor house (again, the interior was a movie set). The exterior, however, is a gate house for a boarding school. Yes...a gate house. There's no interior to the structure that we could see, and it looks a little different now than it did in the movie (remind you, the movie was filmed in the 1960s).

After completing our Sound of Music tour of Salzburg, we drove about an hour and a half back into Germany to the Leonardo Hotel Royal on the outskirts of Munich. We didn't want to stay directly in Munich because we were visiting the Dachau former KZ camp the next day and picked a hotel that was only about 30 minutes away from that.

When we arrived at the hotel, we took a cab into downtown Munich or Marienplatz. We saw the town hall with its onion spires and got dinner at the infamous beer hall where they forgot my order.

We didn't actually plan anything to do in Munich, but it was nice to spend an hour or two there that evening for dinner. The next day started off very somber before we headed south into the Bavarian province of Germany and the lovely Black Forest region. For fairytale castles and tales of mad king Ludwig, click HERE. Until then....So long, farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, goodbye...

Thanks for reading!

- Foxy the Traveler