Austria: Salzburg, Mozart and The Sound of Music

On Saturday, we took a day trip to beautiful Salzburg, birthplace and childhood home of Mozart and famous more recently as the setting for the 1960s movie "The Sound of Music"

After a 3 hour drive into the mountains of Austria, we had a picnic along the river across from this church (see below) and along the right side bank of the river.

Our picnic spot had a playground immediately behind us which AJ took full advantage of...

S and H joined the playground party while V and Rachel had a chat by the river...

Then it was off to Mirabell Palace and Gardens across the river where some scenes from "The Sound of Music" were filmed.  The girls sang the "Do, Re, Mi..." song as we headed here.

Rachel always had a dream of being like Julie Andrews....

Mission accomplished.

My family will laugh at what AJ did in the picture above.  When I was 3 years old I 'walked out' of almost all our family pictures!

It's good to have silly, fun days like this as a family...

The girls took a hair tie and made a 'unicorn horn' on AJ when we saw this unicorn statue.  Might be a form of child abuse to post this, but he seemed pretty excited at the time so here you go....

Other pictures from Mirabell Gardens...

Sometimes it is really good to stop and smell the roses...

We headed across the river and spent an hour+ in the Mozart Museum.  This museum is in the home where he was born and where he spent his childhood.

What is neat about Salzburg is that the inner city is all pedestrian roads.  You get a real feel for the layout of the city in Mozart's day.  While the buildings may have been updated, for the most part the layout of the city has not changed.  The view on the street just outside Mozart's home...

History of the house...

Layout of the house...

The Mozart Museum has an extensive number of letters sent from father to son, Mozart to wife, wife to Mozart, Mozart to sister etc.  Mozart died at age 35 and his young widow preserved all these letters which I thought formed the most interesting part of the museum (other than being in his childhood home).

In the picture below, Mozart's father wrote a friend telling him how at age 5 Mozart had spent an hour and a half with his father learning this piece of music and played it perfectly at the end of the lesson....

Mozart's childhood violin he used when playing in front of royalty.  This display is now in the room where he was born....

Instrument he used to write his last opera "The Magic Flute" (which we saw a few days later in Vienna!)

One other interesting item in the museum was an actual photo of his widow from 1840.  I didn't get a picture of that, but found it interesting nonetheless.  An interesting fact from the museum was a notation that out of 1795 children born in a certain time period in Salzburg (late 1700s), LESS THAN 1000 of those kids made it to the age of 10.  The child mortality rate was astonishing.  Mozart and his wife had 6 kids in their relatively brief 9 year marriage (due to his early death).  Of those 6 children only 2 sons lived past infancy.  Neither son married or had children so there are no direct descendants of Mozart in the world today.

After leaving the museum we walked around the rest of 'old town' Salzburg.  The city erected the statue of Mozart (see below) in 1842.  His widow died at age 80 only a few months before the unveiling of the statue and no doubt knew the statue would be in this square.  Both of his adult sons attended the unveiling...

Rachel has an 'eye' for good shots like this.....getting a shot of the fountain across from Mozart's statue and then a close up of one of the horses in the fountain...

The cathedral downtown, also featured in "The Sound of Music"...

It was quite stunning inside....

The sun hit the cross above the alter just perfectly when we were in the cathedral...

V tried to take a picture of the ceiling by laying down....and of course AJ piled on, followed by S...

The Salzburg castle in the background...

Interesting street performer who looks to be levitating....

Another street performer who seems to be sitting....

Maybe the coolest McDonald's sign in the world....

We enjoyed our day in beautiful, quaint Salzburg....

Til next time, God bless!