We spent several hours in the car today and couldn’t figure a title to fit today. Here are a couple:

The Hills Were Alive

You Don’t See That Every Day

Always Wear Your Helmut

You Can’t Go Over It. You Can’t Go Under It. You Have to Go Through It

Everything’s Older Than The U.S.

We ventured to Salzburg for The Sound of Music van tour. Andrée’s been looking forward to this for months and excitedly jumped into the front seat of the van with our driver Helmut. He was a jovial man with an absolute WEALTH of knowledge about seemingly everything. First and foremost, Helmut knew everything about the movie, its actors, its locations and the history behind the scenes and real-life Von Trapp family. Andrée was in heaven for the entire four hour ride around Salzburg and the surrounding areas.

Andrée and Helmut chatting it up.

The beauty of our experience was also the fact that Helmut was focused solely on the people in the van. He answered every question we had and shared a lot of side stories about the things he’s seen on other tours, times he’s seen the actors in town, the one time the real Maria snuck back into Salzburg to see her city again (while pretending to be an American tourist), and the stories of all the Roman ruins at our last stop, the church where Maria got married (but not where she married in real life).

Here’s all the photo evidence of our day.

Hellbrunn Palace – the current location of the ‘I am 16’ gazebo

Before our journey to Salzburg, we went back to Hallstatt with Sarah (who slept while we visited the town last night). We were able to explore more of the town and saw sights not seen in RI. For instance, we went down an alley to the water and noticed that the cafe on the dock was just sitting out in the water. No railing. No warning signs. Nothing. Survival of the fittest. You move your chair too far back and you’re getting wet, so be careful.

While taking the picture, a family of swans, friendly swans, came swimming up to us. You know how you can’t get within 10 yards of a swan without it hissing at you? These swans encouraged pictures. Even let us take pictures of their swanlings (we made that one up this morning). It was a pretty cool experience.

While out on our Sound of Music tour, we also drove by the Red Bull World Headquarters. With all the crazy things their athletes do, this was certainly an understated campus. Just the bulls, cast in bronze, charging out of one of the buildings.

Ended our day with our new favorite waiter, Elvis P. (no joke), at the hotel down the road from our rental. That’s where we ordered a beer from a place that’s been brewing it since 1475. Older than the New World’s discovery.