Sound of Music / Hallstatt-tour

We were off on our Sound of Music & Hallstatt tour just after 9:00. At first we drove through the old town of Salzburg (early in the morning the pedestrian streets are open to vehicles, likely to accommodate deliveries) stopping at Christ Church Cemetery. This cemetery was used as the model for the Hollywood cemetery used in the movie. It truly is an incredible setting. We drove outside of town and took in too many different scenes to list. Suffice it to say this was a terrific tour. We then headed out to the village of Hallstatt, about a 75-minute drive. We had 2 ½ hours in Hallstatt. Hallstatt sits on a lake (also Hallstatt) and it’s claim to fame is it is the home of the oldest salt mine in Austria. The mine entrance sits 500 meters about the town on the mountain. There is a funicular that goes up the mountain but regretfully the day had low cloud cover so the upper station was in the clouds. We had a few raindrops while in Hallstatt but it wasn’t continuous or heavy. We did buy DW Austrian made wool-blend gloves and socks. We also bought a pair of 100% Alpaca socks for each of us, which will likely come in handy on our summer “Arctic circle” cruise. Our guide recommended a bakery in town for the best gingerbread. We did stop there and shared a gingerbread cookie. They also had packages of Almond Macaroons so one package was brought back to the hotel. For a snack, we stopped in an Italian restaurant and shared an order of Calamari. It was okay, and not anything special. We all met back at the van as directed, with all eight of us arriving within two minutes of each other. We then drove on to other spots where the Sound of Music was filmed, including the “Do-Re-Me” road, and the tree-lined lane. Our last actual stop was the town of Mondsee, where the church is that was used (interior only) for the wedding scene. At Mondsee, we had enough time to stop in a coffee shop for a shared piece of Apple cake with a meringue top. We then drove back to Salzburg where our guide told us about a few other movie scenes at the Mirabell garden. We left the van there and that was the end of the tour at about 5:20.

Really nice tour. Our guide, Marcus, was very knowledgeable, spoke great English, and made the trip both informative and fun. We saw lots of beautiful sights, and I liked that the tour was not soley focused on the Sound of Music, even thought we included all those sites as well. Hallstatt was lovely and wr had adequate time to enjoy each destination.

It was a very good experience our tour guide Elvis was very knowledgeable of Salzburg history as well as Hallstatt. It was a great pleasure having him as our tour guide we learned a lot from him.