We set off fairly early in the morning (9am) and drove through the Salzburg country-side to the town of Mondsee, which is famous for the cathedral that Maria and the Captain got married in, in the Sound of Music...and I tell you, there were at LEAST 4 couples getting married there today - we saw 4 different brides in the space of 20 minutes - Saturdays must be the day for weddings (as it is at home I guess!).
The famous church..with some wedding cars out the front...
Another bride arrives.....
Some of the colourful buildings in the town square....
The next stop on Shane's magical mystery tour was St Gilgen. This town has an amazing gondola that will take you all the way to the top of the mountain (it takes about 10 minutes to get to the top in the gondola - or a 2 hour hike up....no thanks!). The girls were VERY excited to say the least.
The gondola station at the bottom.....
On we get..fighting for who gets on first.....
Up we go....over the road and up the hill.....
And up
And up...just when you think it couldn't get any higher...
We even spotted a few deer on the mountain beneath us....you can "just" see one in this picture (look just to the right of the brown grasses around the middle of the picture)....
We FINALLY made it to the top....totally worth it for the amazing view!!! I think some of the opening credits for the Sound of Music are filmed here as well....
The gondolas seem to go all the way up into the sky...
We stopped for a coffee/hot chocolate at the top.....an even nicer view than the cafe at the Salzburg castle!
Above the cafe is the actual mountain peak (only about a 5 minute hike)...this is the view on the other side of the mountain....right at the back you can see a glacier in the midst of the mountains...
The girls thought this was the most fantastic adventure ever.....!!!
Once we got back down the mountain we had a quick explore of St Gilgen town.....being part of bavaria it has a very typical style....the flowers, the colours and the shapes all work so well together....gorgeous.
St Gilgen main town...
After leaving St Gilgen we drove further south and around the other side of the lake to a town called St Wolfgang, named after the lake itself (Wolfgangsee).....this was very pretty although very touristy...and a lot of boats that do tours around the lake leave from this point....you can see why so many tourists like it here though...
We returned back to Salzburg after our adventure, very happy that we had gone out to explore this area. Thanks Shane for being a fantastic tour director!!! We spent our final afternoon in Salzburg in a beer garden watching the girls spinning around and around a pole until Eloise came unstuck and fell over. Much tears resulted but she is fine and the pizza for dinner and the One Direction concert on TV (should I be concerned that both my girls LOVE this band?) made her forget she had even hurt herself!!!
Tomorrow we have decided to bypass Neuschwanstein castle.....it will add an extra 2 hours driving time on our day and apparently you can only do guided tours that go for half an hour anyway.....it isn't worth the extra hassle driving with the kids (those of you with young kids - or those of you who have had young kids at some point - will understand).....so instead we will do the straight 3 hour trek into Germany to find our hotel right near the Legoland amusement park so we can get cracking early on Monday morning!!
