DAY 100 TUESDAY JULY 3 THE GENUINE SOUND OF MUSIC

WE HAVE SCORED A CENTURY of enjoyable days already, and so much more to come.  We feel like we are starting a new holiday every week.  After several days of hot sun,  there was a lot of thunder and lightning up on the bald mountains but we slept comfortably.  The day turned out to be misty, cloudy and wetter as the day moved on.  The Deputy Mayor said that Salzburg has a resident population of 150,000 but 350,000 come because of seeing the Sound Of Music.  The movie was never a hit in Austria or Germany but the rest of the world made it the most popular movie of all time.  So we joined the throng because if we came here and did not do the tour, Deb Holloman would rubbish us on Facebook.  We enjoyed every minute of it, Deb.  We learned that the opening scene of the movie was taken less than a kilometer up the hill from us in Fuschl.  We chose Panorama Tours and they had the gaudiest of all the coaches going the rounds today.

There were more than 20 different locations around Salzburg that were used in the film, despite the fact that most of the indoor shots were done in Hollywood with mockups.  The bus took us first to Leopoldskron Palace which was used as the von Trapp home and the lake (dug out manually for the archbishop) was where they fell out of the boat.

The dance scene where he proposed to Maria was on the balcony. We next went to Hellbrunn Palace where the replica of the gazebo is kept:

It was at this palace that the children were filmed climbing trees in playclothes made of curtain material.

The bus drove past Fuschl Lake and Wolfgangs Lake (named after the saint, not the composer, but his mother grew up there) and dropped us off at Mondsee which had been on the route of our bike ride last Thursday.  This is the largest of the local lakes.  We visited St Michael's Basilica in the town of Mondsee and found it very different from the sombre English Cathedrals. Bein in the Baroque style it was more colourful and bright but just as reverence-inspiring.

This was the church used for the wedding and it was perfect for that purpose.  The bus dropped us back in Salzburg at 1.30pm and we wandered through Mirabell Gardens where we saw the Pegasus fountain where they sang do, re, mi.

We could not remember which of the ugly dwarf statues was used. Was it this one?

We saw the house where Mozart lived for 7 years and crossed the Mozart pedestrian bridge to Mozart Place

and admired the Hohensalzburg fort that dominates the city

We wandered through the crowds in the old city and many were enjoying a horse and cart ride

We found a picture of the real live von Trapps and finally a statue of the young man himself

We found it strange that we could hear no music in this part of the town and no standard afternoon Mozart recital.  All we found was a clever gravity defying ghost of Mozart.  How did he do it?