Sing-A-long Salzburg!!!

Guest speakers: Kortney, Tricia, Camille, Caroline, Tanner, Tearney, Dustin, Jody

We woke up this morning to a refreshingly free breakfast at our quaint Austrian bed and breakfast.  The girls were all drinking lots of liquids for breakfast to prep their vocal chords for the upcoming sound of music tour (and we just happened to make it a sing-a-long).  We boarded two 9 passenger vans with Tanner and "Mr. Bohneyto" (tanner's new nickname for our teacher chaperon; courtesy to a Ranger newspaper misspelling) deciding to go in the sing-a-long girl's van. (In previous blogs "Mr. Bohneyto" failed to mention his other newly acquired nickname, "ass man", given by our Munich bike tour guide, James from Melbourne, because he was the designated caboose of the bike tour)...

After a tour around Salzburg, seeing the old and new city and the history behind it, the tour guide put in a sound of music cd. All passengers in the van sang along, even Camille, who had recently lost her voice.

We saw several of the sites of the movie, such as the wedding church and the back yard, patio, and dock of the Trapp house. We took the bus outside Salzburg, to the alpine slides. Those are long metal luges twisting down a mountain. lots of fun. The attendant at the top of the slide mentioned (as Tanner began to slide down) that he hoped the brakes worked because the slide was wet. The brakes, luckily, worked fine. The country side is gorgeous along with all the small villages along the sides of lakes. We had Austrian Apple Strudel for lunch that was to die for. Camille, unfortunately, wore about 90% of her apple strudel after she accidentally catapulted it onto her lap. No worries, Chris obeyed the five second rule and inhaled the fallen strudel: living up to his title "The Garbage Disposal."  After lunch we went to Mozart's birthplace. Then we moved to more exciting things. Around 3 in the afternoon we began to climb to the mighty castle of Salzburg. A steady rain began to fall, and the hike became a quest. When we arrived at the first gate of the castle, we realized how huge it was. Massive walls shot hundreds of feet into the sky and ended in sleek parapets. One of us was considerably more excited than the others. *cough*Chiris*cough* Inside, the castle seemed to stretch on forever. Unfortunately the notoriously strict Austrians decided to lock most of the doors, so we had to either slip around in the rain or shuffle through herds of loud, clumsy tourists. The coolest part of the castle was the ancient center tower which was built in 1060 (ish). And the fantastic suit of armor in one of the buildings. 

     We were so excited to discover that traditional Austrian clothes are very popular, especially at the 4 weddings that we ran into today. well.....battery is running out, goodbye...goodnight...