Sunday, May 7, 2023
On Sunday, we woke up early to make it to our 9:30 am “The Sound of Music” bike tour with Fräulein Maria’s tours. Mr. Strange was nervous because he hadn’t ridden a bike in seven years (neither had I) and only then because I wanted him to practice because I wanted to do this on our last trip to Europe. So we were both horribly out of practice, and I was also pulling LS in a trailer behind my bike.
We started off pretty shaky (at one point, I got way behind the group because of a tight turn between bollards that I couldn’t make with the trailer and had to spend some time backing up to get through) but our guide, Cole, was always great about making sure no one got left behind.
We started at Mirabellplatz and the garden where “Do-Re-Mi” was filmed and then headed over the bridge into the old city to see various other filming locations. Then we headed up the hill toward the fortress, which was the only big hill on the route. I peddled up about half of it before getting off to walk, and WOW was it hard to walk the bike the with trailer. Mr. Strange and I ended up exchanging bikes, and I walked his up while he got LS to the top. Here, we were greeted by beautiful views of the Alps, and the gate of the abbey. We were able to go inside the chapel here, and LS enjoyed taking photos of the flowers.
From there, we headed into the countryside, ultimately ending up at Hellbrunner Park, where the gazebo is now located. If we ever make it back to Salzburg, I’d like to go see the Schloss Hellbrunn and the trick fountains, and if you are more confident on a bike, apparently there’s an option to pay a few euros to rent the bikes for the rest of the day if you wish to stay there to visit the palace, but we chose to stay with the group and headed back to town.
After the tour, we headed over to the Haus der Natur. We wandered through the aquarium and various exhibits before finding ourselves in the Science Lab, which was LS’s favorite part. There were three floors of interactive stations to explore. In typical four-year-old fashion, she had been toting a stuffed animal around everywhere our entire trip, and today’s stuffy of choice was Spinner, her spider. At some point between the top floor and bottom floor, Spinner was lost, which we didn’t discover until closing time. I tried to sneak back through the exhibits to look for it as they were trying to kick us out, but had no luck. We asked at the front desk, and no one had turned her in, and they told us to check back in the morning.
So we headed over to Augustiner Brau for dinner. I had a chicken burger, Mr. Strange opted for the currywurst, and LS had…a pretzel. (Are you noticing a trend here?) It was a nice biergarten but (shh) we like Augustiner Keller and its beer in Munich better.
Monday, May 8, 2023
We awoke on Monday, packed our things, and checked out of the hotel. We stored our bags so we could go do a few things before heading to Vienna. Our first stop was back at Cafe Bazar, which was just as good the second time around. We then headed back over to the Haus der Natur to see if they had located Spinner. They had not. LS was distraught. She cried all the way back to the hotel and to the train station. Now she likes to pretend that Spinner stayed behind to make lots of webs.