The girls (minus Jess) had an earlier start today, as we had to be at the Mirabell Gardens at 9am for our Sound of Music tour! It was great, taking us to many sites used as filming locations, playing the soundtrack on the bus for everyone to sing along to, and giving us behind the scenes info about the filming of the movie.

It took us as far as Wolfgangsee and Mondsee (where the wedding was filmed). We stopped there for morning tea, but the service was so slow, we didn’t have long to spend in the church. The tour finished back at the Mirabell Gardens where a lot of Do Re Mi was filmed, so after Beck, Abi, Belle and I took a lot of photos and recreated some scenes, we went to meet the boys (plus Jess) for lunch.

Meanwhile, the boys plus Jess went to the Catacombs, visited two churches, and went to Dom Quartier, a lifestyle and art museum. I asked Luke for a guest post about their morning, and that’s what he told me, and this is what he showed me! 😂 Apparently there was lots of art to look at and dress ups to use…

We met them all at a restaurant not far from the gardens called Bärenwirt, where we ate yet another schnitzel! I actually asked for a pork cutlet not realising it was just a pork schnitzel rather than a veal schnitzel.

The boys picked that restaurant because there was a brewery nearby where they were hoping to do a beer tour after it opened at 3pm. With some time still to kill before 3pm, we decided to walk back into the Old Town to visit Mozart’s birthplace and the Mozart museum. It did teach me some facts about the Mozart family I didn’t know, but there were SO many people in the museum! At 15 euro per adult, it was not a cheap attraction but definitely drew the crowds, and for us it was included in the Salzburg card we had purchased.

The boys then headed back to the brewery, while the rest of us headed back to the hotel. Zac, Beck, Jess and Oli were keen to get inside out of the cold, while Abi, Belle and I continued on down the road to another attraction included in our Salzburg card called Bible World. It billed itself as an immersive experience of stories from the Bible. The concept and space was great, but the execution was…..well, we are still processing our experience…..

The boys couldn’t join a brewery tour without booking in advance, so enjoyed a couple of beers there instead at a table with an Austrian man called Rudolph who could not speak English.

They then picked up Subway for everyone on their way back to the hotel and we enjoyed eating all together again in the Baroque room. Everyone turned in early tonight though, with the last three stayers being myself, Abi and Zac, who has felt marginally better each day. He wanted to be the last one up for a change, even though he looked like this!

We were a little concerned about this accommodation because we could have been stuck in several different separate hotel rooms over the new year, but the Baroque room being made available to us allowed us to congregate and eat together every single night, which was lovely. It has been a lovely place to stay in a central location in a city I’ve never been to before but now love.