Munich, Salzburg and Vienna

9 Dec 07 - I love Christmas markets so we decided to spend a week in Munich, Salzburg and Vienna. Highlights in Bavaria were seeing the birthplace and residence of Mozart and the tour to Neuschwanstein Castle, home of King Ludwig II, and inspiration for the Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland. On the way to the Castle, we stopped at Oberammergau, a small German village in Bavaria, where Garry's mum travelled 30 years ago to watch the Passion play (performed since 1634 as a tradition by the villagers who vowed that if God were to spare them from the effects of the bubonic plague affecting the region, they would perform a play every ten years depicting the life and death of Jesus).

MUNICH



SALZBURG



SALZBURG SOUND OF MUSIC TOUR - We did the Sound of Music tour ran by Panorama Co. as recommended by Catherine and Deb. Highlights were seeing the Von Trapp Family Home, Monsee Cathedral and Mirabell Gardens, dancing outside the 'sixteen going on seventeen" pavilion, and acting like an idiot skipping along the road that Maria skipped on from the Nonnberg Abbey to the Von Trapp home. Our guide told us some interesting stories about the filming of the Sound of Music movie - that Liesl almost killed herself when she filmed the pavilion scene. She smashed herself against the glass of the pavilion when skipping from bench to bench, the producers forgot to put anti-slip covering on her shoes, and Little Gretel almost drowned herself when they did the boating scene because she did not know how to swim and the lake was deep.



VIENNA is a really pretty city with lots of palatial architecture. We visited Schonbrunn Palace (built around 1700 and now a UNESCO World Heritage Site), soaked in the Christmas atmosphere and drank lots of Viennese coffee to stay warm (Mark Twain once said that "the best coffee in Europe is Vienna coffee, compared to which all other coffee is fluid poverty").