Salzburg and the Sound of Music

When my dad found out that we were going to do the Sound of Music tour in Salzburg he made us promise that we would sing in the mountains while we were there.  And oh was there plenty of singing going on during this tour.  I only wish I could be like Maria.

The tour started as we rode in the bus past the abbey where Maria was a nun.  The little red roof in the picture is about as much as we saw of it too.  Apparently that is where all the filming was done for the songs like, How do you solve a problem like Maria, etc.

From there we made it to the estate with the lake where all of the children fall out of the boat.  Apparently this estate belongs to some Harvard students who now use it to do research and such.  We found out that this scene had to be filmed twice.  Because little Gretel couldn't swim Julie Andrews was supposed to catch her when everyone fell out of the boat.  This method worked perfectly on the first take, but the director didn't like how the scene went and asked for another take.  On the second take Julie Andrews lost her balance and fell backwords meaning that Gretel went under.  The second take is the one that is actually used in the film, and Gretel can be seen going under in the movie. 

We also learned that it took so much chocolate to keep Gretel happy throughout the filming of the movie, that by the end she actually had gained quite a bit of weight.  So much so that she actually looks chubbier in the end of the movie.

On the tour this fortress was also pointed out, although I don't think it has anything to do with the movie it was one of the main sights in Salzburg.  We were also able to visit Mozart's Geburtshaus and Wohnhaus where he lived between 1773 and 1780.

By far the best stop on the tour was the gazebo.  The gazebo was a dream come true.  I was sixteen, he was seventeen, and the rest is history.

Apparently while shooting this scene, Liesel slipped and her foot crashed through one of the glass windowpanes.  She was bandaged up and finished the scene with her hurt foot. Afterwards she received a standing ovation from the rest of the cast.

From there we went to the street where Maria sings "I have confidence in sunshine, I have confidence in rain, I have confidence that spring will come again..."  It was fun to see some older women trying to click their heels together as they ran down this road singing this song.

Finally, we stopped at the church from the wedding scene of Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer.  We were able to walk through the place where it actually happened, how lucky are we. 

Kind of interesting the similarities between Maria's dress in the movie and the dress that was worn just a few weeks ago by Princess Catherine.  I found these pictures online to show the similarities.



All along the bus ride we had a grandmother, mother, and daughter that knew the words to every single song and were singing their hearts out the entire time.  I want to publicly thank them for making our tour more memorable than it ever would have been otherwise.