The Sound of Music in Salzburg

I spent the last few days in one of the most musical cities in Europe, Salzburg, Austria. On day one we did the Sound of Music tour, which means we saw the sites where Julie Andrews and co. sang those immortal songs...as well as actual sites where the real von Trapp family lived/walked/sang etc.

We spent our second day slightly differently, acting less like obnoxious American tourists and more like locals. We shopped during the day, spending way more money than we should've on fabulous items we felt we couldn't live without, and joined the Austrian aristocratic elite in an evening of sophistication. We took a funicular up to the main castle in Salzburg where we dined in a fancy restaurant with great views of the city and surrounding musical hills.

The first course was a fairly strange gelatin-with-beef dish, not our favorite. The second course was a delicious cup of soup, which somehow reminded someone of Christmas and as a result we all discussed our Christmas traditions for the rest of the meal. The third course, for me, was a salmon cooked in a white wine sauce with parsley potatoes....quite excellent. The dessert was 'a Mozart assortment' composed of some light chocolate ice cream and a small apple fritter with jam and powdered sugar in the shape of a treble clef. Great stuff, perfect to get us in the mood for the next stage of the evening.

We then adjurned to another higher room in the castle, where a string quarter played four pieces by Brahms, Hayden, Mozart and Dvorzac. It was fabulous and we all felt very posh. Then we came back to the reality that we are not wealthy aristocrats, rather we are cheap students....and ate McFlurries at McDonalds.