Austria & Germany

What a fantastic time I had in Austria & Germany! It started out a little stressful, as I had to fly stand by with my sister in order to get her fantastic airline discount rate. (Round trip to Germany ended up being $50!). We did make it on the second flight to Philadelphia, although my sister had to sit in the jump seat since I got the last empty seat on the plane. We had quite a long layover then made it on the flight to Austria and were able to get seats together, so it was perfect. Twenty seven hours after getting up and getting ready and flying and all, we landed in Munich, Germany. It was 9:00AM there and we were able to check in to our hotel early and take a nap, after which we roamed the city and went to dinner, came back to our hotel and decided what tours we would be taking when we arrived in Austria. We took the train the next day to Salzburg, went to our hotel and proceeded to look up the tour company which offered the Sound of Music tour we were so looking forward to going on. We ended up booking an Ice Cave tour through them that left at 2:00PM that day. What an adventure that was! We took a bus about an hour out of the city, up to the Alps, got off and had to hike up into the mountains for about a mile, then get on the steepest aerial tram in Europe, just to get off and hike up yet another mile. Whew! I would have trained for that if I had known it was going to be that hard! It was also 91 degrees instead of the 68 degrees it was suppose to be. Once we made it to the 5,000 feet elevation level, we approached the entrance of the 1500 year old ice cave. Wow--it was amazing! Every three people in the group had a lantern and when we approached a really large ice formation, our tour guide would back light it so it would glow and we could really see the beauty of the ice formations. It was quite a long trip into the caves and consisted of walking up 750 steps, including 75 steps which were at a 45 degree angle! It was quite a workout, but well worth it! Halfway down the mountain on the way back we stopped at a cafe and had our first apple strudel--delicious! We walked the city for the rest of the evening and I quickly decided it was the most beautiful city I had ever seen. The next day consisted of touring on foot. We visited a castle, many Sound of Music shooting locations, took lots of pictures and did some shopping. Our third day was the official Sound of Music tour! We got on a bus with a lot of other Americans obsessed with the Sound of Music (something the Austrians just don't understand, nor have any of them seen the movie) and proceeded to drive by many locations, stopping at the Von Trapp patio where the children fell into the water, the "sixteen going on seventeen" gazebo and traveled 50 miles to the church where they shot Maria and Captain Von Trapp's wedding. It was a great trip, in a comfy, beautiful bus, all while listening to the Sound of Music soundtrack--a cute touch! Upon leaving the bus, the tour guide passed out a booklet to everyone with the locations of every scene shot in Salzburg so we could visit the rest of them on foot. What a great time we had and nothing had changed at all since the movie was filmed in 1965--amazing! The following day we took a tour to the salt mines. What fun that was! We had to wear a miner's uniform (basically a jumpsuit), got on a small train which whipped you through the salt mine tunnels, then got off and had to slide down a huge banister to get to the bottom of the mines--oh so fun! We had many great meals in Salzburg and saw every inch of that town--it was truly memorable. After being there for almost five days, we took the train back to Munich, checked in to our hotel and decided we would go to the Dachau Concentration Camp, because we knew it would be terribly depressing and we wanted to see it, but didn't want it to be the last thing we did before coming home. It was actually harder than I even imagined to walk around this terrible place. It's something you can't even describe to someone, it's so painful to see. The next day we went to the Neuschwanstein Castle. It was beautiful! This castle is in Bavaria and was used in the movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and it was also the castle that Walt Disney had his imagineers design Sleeping Beauty's castle after. It was a great day trip and I'm glad we made the last minute decision to see it. We spent our last day in Munich walking around the city, visiting a 15th century monestary where the monks still brew their own beer and eating and shopping. It was a trip I never imagined I would be taking and SO glad I did!