We had a full day, leaving for breakfast at 8:00 before taking a city bus out to the area where the Salzburg Ward meets. On the way we passed by a Sound of Music tour bus. (We opted to visit the sites on our own.)
We also walked by Mozart’s residence home. From 1773 to 1787, the Mozarts lived at the so-called “Dance Master’s House,” today’s Mozart Residence on Makartplatz. The spacious eight-room apartment on the first floor now houses a museum.
At the bus stop closest to our hotel, we noticed 3 YSA aged kids, dressed for church, and the boy was holding a bag of sliced white bread. We guessed we might be going to the same place. We were. We followed them.
We got there a bit early. Here’s a look at this stake center:
The walk to Schloss Leopold took about 15 minutes. It was another beautiful day–cold but sunny. The frost on the ground is still frozen, each blade of grass was white.
The original Trapp family home was an estate known as Villa Trapp in Aigen to the southeast of Salzburg. In the movie, two shooting locations were used for different parts of the villa – Leopoldskron Palace and Frohburg Palace.
Today Leopoldskron Palace is an event Hotel. It backs up to a lake that was frozen over. There were beautiful grounds around the hotel (the gazebo has been moved to another location in town to accommodate the tourists). We spent about 30-40 minutes there walking by the lake, walking around the hotel, enjoying the quiet beautiful setting.
On one side of the hotel was a grass/wooded area. The lake was beautiful, icy, cold. There was someone ice skating on the far side of the lake. It was really nice to see this place (not as a pack of tourists in a tour bus). Tonight we’re going to watch The Sound of Music just to see the sights of Salzburg while we’re here.
Below is a rescue plank to use if someone falls through the ice.
This is the front side of the hotel.
Here’s the view of the castle from Leopardskron.
It was fun to imagine the filming that took place here with Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer.
On the way out, I noticed these 2 Stolpersteine by the gate. Both men were workers here, and both fled, one to Paris (he died in 1841) and one to the USA, where he died in NYC in 1943. Everywhere we go here, we feel Hitler’s reach.
Our next destination was the memorial chapel in Oberndorf, where “Stille Nacht” was performed for the first time.
Our Frankfurt Germany Mission 