Our Review Of The Sound Of Music Tour In Salzburg

I’ve got a ton of posts to crank out on our family vacation to Sicily and Salzburg.  I’m hoping to get my butt in gear.  Here’s a quick peek at what I expect to cover:

• Getting There.  Connecting In Rome And Using Hertz Gold Plus Rewards Points Overseas
• Hotel Review: Sheraton Catania, Sicily
• A Return To Taormina, A Beautiful City On A Hill
• Our Favorite Part of Taormina
• Exploring Mt. Etna
• Walking And Eating In Downtown Catania
• A Day In Siracusa
• Priority Pass Lounge At Catania Airport
• Mess after Mess.  airberlin To Salzburg
• Hotel Review: Sheraton Grand Salzburg
• Sound of Music Tour
• Walking Around Salzburg
• L’Osteria Restaurant
• Salt Mines at Berchtesgaden
• Cable Car at Untersbergbahn
• Tasty Donuts, Salzburg
• Train To Vienna
• Hotel Review: Park Hyatt Vienna, OMG
• Park Hyatt Vienna Review, Part 2
• Riding The U-Bahn Subway In Vienna
• Schmetterlinghaus: The Imperial Butterfly House
• Haus des Meeres: Aqua Terra Zoo
• Austrian Airlines Lounge, Vienna Airport
• Austrian Airlines VIE-IAD, Business Class Review
• Wrapping Up

We had plenty of choices for cities to visit in Europe during this trip.  The specific reason we chose Salzburg was because of the Sound of Music tours.  Our SPG Ambassador helped us find a solid tour company in the area.  We chose Panorama tours and would recommend them to others.

Panorama offers a handful of tour options.  We’re not really tour people, so we chose the shortest 4 hour option.  Adult tickets cost 42 Euro a piece, while children pay 24 Euro.

The tour starts out just a few blocks away from the Sheraton Grand Salzburg.  We showed up at around 9am for a 9:15 start.  The first bus from our group left just a few minutes after the scheduled start time.  I’ll say up front that we could have done the entire tour ourselves by renting a car and doing the research.  But, if you’re interested in letting someone else take control, you can’t go wrong with the tour we selected.

Movie Sites

The kids had fun recreating some of the scenes from the movie as we move through the tour sites.  There are 6 places the movie was filmed that we got to see during our tour:

• Mirabell Gardens: “Do-Re-Mi” fame.

• Leopoldskron Palace: Boating scenes, the backyard of the Captain’s estate.

• Hellbrunn Palace: The gazebo featured in the filming of “16 going on 17”.

• Nonnberg Abbey: A quick drive-by where the nuns resided during the movie.

• Salzburg Lake Area: Panoramic shots used the movie.

• Mondsee: The wedding chapel

Finishing Up At The Chapel

The chapel in Mondsee is the last stop on the tour before driving back into downtown Salzburg.  Mondsee is a cute little town with a handful of restaurants and shops.  While there’s only a brief period of time in each of the stops along the tour, they gave us about 30 minutes to walk and shop in Mondsee.

Somewhat surprisingly, most of the shopping wasn’t geared specifically towards the movie.  There were some typical “touristy” souvenir items, but also a variety of handmade goods at some of the smaller shops in town.

The Final Two Pennies

The bus ride was comfortable and informative.  If you’re a big Sound of Music fan, it’s a light, fun experience.  As you can see below, our daughter and her friend enjoyed singing some of the songs from the movie during the bus ride.

The most interesting thing we learned?  Up until recently, the Sound of Music movie wasn’t well-known in Salzburg.  While it was an instant hit in the United States, most folks in Salzburg didn’t watch it.  The movie wasn’t initially translated into languages other than English.  It’s more popular in Salzburg now, no doubt aided by all of the tourists flocking to see the scenes where it was filmed.

Maybe the lack of popularity of the movie in Salzburg has kept the filming sites in good shape and accessible.  They’re definitely not over-commercialized like they might be in the United States.  The only place that felt like that was being forced to walk through a gift shop to get into the chapel in Mondsee.

Overall, there are a lot worse ways to spend half a day in Salzburg.

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