the hills are alive. . .
Friday, a group of us got up at 4:45 to make our 6:00 train to Salzburg, which is about 3 hours west of Vienna. This wake-up call came after about 3 hours of sleep because I took a massive three hour crash nap in the afternoon before, so I only got about 3 more hours of “sleep” before getting up way to early. Just keep this time table in mind as you read this. 3 nap hours of sleep + 3 night-time sleep + getting up at 4:45 in the mornin’
Salzburg is a little river town where they filmed “The Sound of Music.” It might be all it’s known for, because every other stop is “And this is where Maria smells a flower” and stuff like that. So what did we do? We took a four hour “Sound of Music” tour. Oh yes.
Me, Martha and Daniel had some time to walk around the old Salzburg area and see some churches. It was a beautiful sunny day and the perfect temperature to walk around. The city itself is beautiful, with these tall mountains surrounding it and the river cutting through the city, old architecture, flowers and the fall trees turning colors. Autumn here is incredible! I can stay awake for hours on a train looking out of the windows at the scenery.
After lunch, we met up with Stacy, Zab, Lyndsey and Becka for the tour. We only had about 10 or 11 on the tour, so it was a small group. We saw the Gazebo where they danced and sang, the trees where the kids play in, the lake they fall into, the palace where they filmed the out door stuff (that was really neat) and some other random places.
The tour guide took us up to this toboggan ride that was pretty random and a lot of fun. Check out the picture of me and Stacy dramatizing the ride. The drive through these little villages and by lakes was so pretty because of the season. I really loved that part. We went to the Wolfgang lake, where Mozart’s mother was born and probably where she got his name from. Salzburg is also known for being Mozart’s birthplace, and they have a ton of life-size cardboard cut outs of him every where advertising things.
So the tour was fun, we came back and had a huge dinner at the hostel that some of them were staying in for the evening. Me, Martha and Daniel were going to catch the over-night train to Venice and stay for the rest of the weekend, so we didn’t get a hostel. Our train left at 1:38 in the morning, so we just showered at the hostel and tried to stay awake while the others went to bed.
We got to the trains station at 1:15, and it was pretty cold and the doors were open so there was no warm place to stay. Then the train was 50 minutes late getting there, so by the time we got on the train at 2:30, we were cold, exhausted, and ready to sleep. We had an extra visitor in our compartment, but me and Martha still managed to sleep the full 7 hours it took to get to Venice.
Venice really is beautiful, and not really like the other parts of Italy. After our week-long Italy excursion, I thought I would be done with big Italian cities for awhile but Venice is actually a lot different. With all the side streets and alleys and gondolas, it’s very picturesque, and I have a lot of pictures. We only stayed 5 hours because we were tired and hauling our backpacks around with us all day, so we were ready to come back yesterday afternoon, jumped on a train at 3:00 and made it back to Vienna late Saturday night. It was a really fun weekend, and I enjoyed sleeping in this morning and getting a lot of stuff done before our insane 12-day fall break.
*me and stacy on our awesome ride! hah
*me and martha in venice
*the group of girls that went on the sound of music tour. that's right, we're standing in front of THE gazebo! hahaha
*venice from the main canal
*a gondola in venice