Up early after a restless night, despite the copious amounts of JB, to a breakfast of scrambled eggs, juice and a cup of tea, which we managed without the attendance of the fire brigade. Off to catch the 8.27 train to Salzburg with no changes of trains! Woohoo! We managed to grab ourselves a first class private cabin which was just luxurious, especially as we had cabin service as well. I did feel like royalty. :-)
The scenery changed from flat lush green fields covered with a thick white frost, to more mountainous wooded areas. The snow-capped peaks rose at crazy angles from the surrounding area- really "sticky-up" and jagged- like nothing we have in Australia- and immediately reminiscent of The Sound of Music landscape, our afternoon tour with Matt.
We were collected from our hotel and delivered to the Panorama Tours Office, where we began the tour with Matt. We had just started watching "The Sound of Music" DVD which refreshed our memories about some of the placed we were about to see in the flesh. We went to the von Trapp house, the lake, the gazebo, the abbey and the amazing church in Mondsee where Maria was married to Georg von Trapp in the movie. It was indescribably beautiful and unchurch-like. We visited two little villages on the lake and had a coffee and cake at Mondsee. I opted for the kaiserschmann wit zwetschkenroster: a delicious eggy pancake with a bowl of forest fruits. Everyone else except Elizabeth had the frauenschuh (shoe of the woman) which was a rich chocolatey biscuit covered with more chocolate- far too rich for me.
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| The lake from the Sound of Music |
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| The gazebo |
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| The von Trapp house |
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| Salzberg Castle |
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| Little house on the banks of Lake Mondsee |
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| Inside the church at Mondsee |
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Very strange but beautiful church
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Back to our hotel for a full 4 course Austrian dinner of carpaccio (raw meat thinly sliced), a salty soup with dumplings, turkey schnitzel and apple strudel accompanied by a mango bellini and a local rose. It was quite late by the time we managed to crawl under our doonas.
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