The next morning we started our self-walking tour with the Mirabell Gardens where they filmed a lot of the Sound of Music scenes. It was beautiful! There were two weddings going on also! We saw the dwarf statues, including the one with glasses which was in the movie. These dwarfs were statues of real people who lived in the palace with one of the Prince-archbishops. Then we headed to Mozarts second home and listened to the audio tour. It was very interesting!
We then went to St. Stephen's Church Cemetery and it was so beautiful and peaceful! Mozarts father and wife are buried there. The next on the tour was an Abbey which was on top of a hill. Chris pushed Naomi in the stroller and held Fiona in the Bjorn and practicaly ran up the mountain. He's so tough! I'm glad I brought him along! The view from the Abbey was amazing! We caught our breath and looked around. We saw a huge Ford, extended cab truck at the top. It seemed so out of place but was so fun to see something American. We started down the hill by way of a different road which was very narrow and very steep! We were planning how to do it safely and a family from India were nearby. The two children, a boy and girl in their teens ran over and said they would help us down. They carried the empty stroller the entire way! They were so cute! We thanked them so much and they were so smiley and happy to help. They ran back up with energy only the teens still posses. A couple minutes later they were back down at the bottom with us again and didn't even look winded! Their parents came down shortly after them and we told them thank you many times. We saw the whom where Joseph Mohr wrote "Silent Night"and right next to it is a wall with a big gash taken out of it. Supposedly an American soldier tried to take a tank down the narrow alley (on his way to a house of ill repute) and took a chunk out of the wall. We walked down the narrow, cobble stoned street and it was so pretty! We kept taking pictures at every door, side-street and ivy-covered wall! We emerged at Mozartplatz and this is where the rain started into its heavy drizzle that didn't end all day, We grabbed a few delicious pastries and continued to the Dom. There were a ton of people here but we popped into the church fast and enjoyed the splendor! The festivalplatz is nearby and we listened to a violin street performer for a bit then saw a horse bath. The horse bath was used for just that, bathing horses, like medieval car wash! We took shelter in the festungsbahn, a giant railway up the side of the mountain to the Hohensburg Palace. The elevetor was insanely cool!
As we got out of the festungbahn we were so drenched and cold. Morale was low, very low. We couldn't find the entrance to the palace and when we did it was either up a huge flight of steep stairs or down a huge flight of steep stairs. To help us get more cheerful, despite being soaked, we took a look at the view from the palace. Breathtaking!! And we agreed the rain and fog made the city look even more beautiful, even if it meant getting soaked! We took a deep breath and hauled the stroller down the steps (we thought down would be easier than up) and were able to take warm refuge inside a really odd marionette puppet museum inside the palace. The palace was really pretty and very interesting. They didn't have any Kings or Queens just Prince-Archbishops who were religious and political rulers.
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