We like our apartment in Salzburg, it is easy to get to the car parking and to get out of town, but being located on a fairly busy street makes it really noisy inside. We have to leave the windows open at night for ventilation since there is no air conditioning to help cool it off. Having the windows open lets in a lot of the noise from cars driving by, even though we are on the third floor.
The result is that I did not get a lot of sleep last night, I think I was finally able to drift off about midnight after most of the traffic died down, but I was awake at about 5:00 AM. Stephanie had no trouble sleeping, lucky her….. I even thought about sleeping a little while on the couch this morning because it was located in a quieter part of the apartment, but once I was up, there was no more sleep to be had.
I eventually made some coffee and ate a chocolate muffin with it for breakfast. Then, as is my usual routine, I worked on the blog post for yesterday so I could keep up. I will have to go back and do proof reading when we get home, and will also need to add small photos to the posts to enhance their readability and interest. Adding the small photos each day into the posts just takes too much time while travelling. As long as I capture the information each day, or at least most if it, I can then fill in missing little bits of detail later at home, along with the photos.
It started raining about 5:30 AM, and the forecast was for rainy weather most of the day, with a little bit of clearing later in the afternoon. Our plan for today was to visit a couple of churches. We plan on visiting the Basilica of St. Michael, which was used in the Sound if Music movie for the large wedding scene between Maria and Captain Von Trapp.
The second church is the Maria Plain Church, which is a pilgrimage church founded in 1674. It has no connection to the movie, just something we decided to visit. Last on our list was to visit the Stift Nonnberg Abbey which was the actual convent Maria came from in the Sound of Music Movie, and in real life. The Abbey is located in Salzburg, but the two churches are located about 30 minutes away by car.. We plan on driving to all three because of the rainy weather.
We specifically chose those two church visits for today because they can be visited on a rainy day. Other than walking to them from a parking lot, we will be inside the churches and dry.
Stephanie got up about 9:30 AM, kudos to her to be able to sleep with the noise of the traffic outside. It finally got too loud for even her as the morning traffic picked up. Neither of us were in a hurry to get out into the rain, so we just hung around inside the apartment until about 11:00 AM.
We are waiting on our Covid tests results from yesterday, and it was just a lingering thought in the back of our minds for most of the morning. Had we not been dealing with head colds, and still feeling a little of the effects from those, we would not be worried at all. However, since we do still have some slight coughs, and some congestion in the mornings, there is always a slight concern that we might test positive for Covid.
We finally decided to get going and left the apartment at about 11:10 AM, and headed to the car parking lot. We entered the address for the Basilica St. Michael into Google Maps, and off we went. Most of the drive was on the A4, which is like a US interstate. Of course, it was still raining, but not very heavily.
The Basilica St. Michael is in the town of Mondsee, and the drive there was not bad, once we got through a couple of congested areas leaving Salzburg. The town was pretty quiet, and the Basilica is located right in the middle of the town itself, surrounded by lots of shops and restaurants. We did not see anywhere to park except on the street, and there were signs limiting the parking to two hours, which was plenty of time for us to see the church.
On the way to the church, we noticed a pay parking machine, and Stephanie looked at other cars parked on the street and they all had paid parking receipts on the dash, so we realized the parking was limited to two hours, but still paid parking. We tried to use coins for the parking fee, Euro 1.50 was the cost for the two hour maximum time. The machine only took contactless credit cards, and the one we specifically used with that capability was back at the apartment, so we opted to use coins. The machine was just like the one we used yesterday to pay for parking when we could not find the apartment parking lot, but we did have and used our contactless credit card for payment.
Every time we selected the amount of time to pay for, the coin slot was closed, and we could not put the payment into the machine for that time allotment. A lady came by to pay for her parking and thought the machine was damaged, and pointed out another pay parking machine a couple of blocks away that we could try.
We walked to the other parking machine and it did the same thing. Finally, we realized that we just needed to put the coins in and not select any specific amount of time, the coin amount would dictate the parking time we were allotted. We put in Euro 1.40 and our ticket came out. We then had to walk back to the car to put the payment receipt on the dash.
Finally done with the parking payment, we headed to the Basilica, the entrance area was right between the two parking payment machines. On the way up to the church, we spotted a sign for restrooms in a separate building, so I took advantage of that availability. The bathrooms were underneath what looked like a government building, and were free and really clean inside.
We then headed up to the church entrance. Access into the church was through a small gift shop. There were not many people inside, and it was nice and quiet. Stephanie found a switch to turn on some inside lights and that made it a little easier for photos. Since it was rainy and cloudy outside, there was not much natural light coming into the church through the windows.
Inside the Basilica St. Michael
The church seemed much longer in the movie, we wondered if they had done something special with the cinematography to make it look longer. We took some photos and walked around looking at all of the side altars. We did not bring any info or read much about the church before we left this morning, which would have been nice. We then went and looked around in the gift shop. We also took a small bottle of holy water, making a small donation for that, as requested by signage. The holy water has a label of the church on the outside of the bottle, but the bottle is actually a small mini bottle for Jägermeister, who must bottle it for the Basilica, probably in exchange for advertising. After all, Jägermeister is an Austrian liquor.
Basilica St. Michael
We left the Basilica and took some photos of the outside since the rain had subsided for the moment. We then visited the nice bathrooms once again, not knowing if there would be access to any bathroom at the next stop, the Maria Plain Church.
We walked back to the car and input the Maria Plain Church address into Google Maps. We had to almost drive the entire way back to Salzburg to get there, but not quite. It took about 30 minutes and we were directed to take an exit off of the A4, which we did. Then the directions got a little tricky and we missed a sharp turn to the right off of the exit ramp. The ramp continued back onto the A4, so we had to go down one more exit and then loop back around, this time making a much simpler exit to the right.
Then we were stuck in some backed up traffic, but we only had to go about a block before we turned off onto a small street, and we saw a sign for the Maria Plain Church. The side street got really narrow for a bit and then widened up. We saw the church on the top of a hill as we approached, but Google Maps was not very accurate on driving instructions to it from where we now were. There was a man outside of a building we were stopped next to so Stephanie asked him if we could drive up to the church and he said yes, and pointed us to the small road going up the hill to the right.
Maria Plain Church
We headed up the road, having to stop once and pull to the side for another car to be able to pass us that was coming down. We found a parking lot at the top of the hill and parked. We passed several guesthouses, small bed and breakfast type accommodations on the drive up to the church. These must cater to pilgrimage guests. Once parked, we had to walk on a steep uphill road from the lot to the church, which is located at the top of the hill.
There were great views of Salzburg below us, and for a few kilometers in the distance. We waited for some other visitors to move so we could get a good photo of the outside of the church without people in it. Then we headed inside to look around.
The Basilica was not that large inside, and blue was the predominant color of the altar and other furnishings. We had never seen a church that had this much blue décor in it, but since it is dedicated to Mary, it made sense.
Inside The Maria Plain Church
We sat down in a pew and took some time to look around. I did not take that many photos, there were people inside, obviously praying, so I did not want to disturb them with the sound of the camera’s shutter.
We left the church and headed back downhill to the parking lot. As we were going downhill, there was a large tour group of older folks struggling to walk up the hill we had taken earlier. We had timed it just right, that bus load of visitors would have certainly overwhelmed the peacefulness of the inside of the church.
The Maria Plain Church Up On The Hill
Once back at the car, we drove back down the small road to the bottom of the hill and stopped for a photo of the Basilica from that vantage point. We then entered the address of the Stift Nonnberg Abbey into the Google Maps App on Stephanie’s phone and started our drive there. We ran back into the traffic jam from earlier and had to turn left into it. Luckily, there was a small turn lane we could go out into and then someone let us into the line of cars. There was some work being done on the overhead power lines for the buses, which are mostly all electric here, and that was the cause of the traffic backup. Once through that, we headed toward the Abbey.
We were then driving trough the center of Salzburg, so it was a little tense, there were a lot of turns and the traffic was fairly heavy. We missed one turn near the Stift Nonnberg Abbey and had to make a slight circle. The Abbey was not on the roadway we were on, so we needed to park and walk there. At first, we did not see any parking, so we started to give up on going to the Abbey, but about two blocks down the road we found a small pay parking lot, so we turned in and parked.
Stift Nonnberg Abbey Cemetery
We started following the Google Map walking directions back toward the Abbey, and the directions made us go up a lot of stairs and then go on a pretty steep uphill pathway. We finally got to the top and then walked right by the Abbey grounds entrance, we just did not see the small gate. A little farther along, we saw some directional signs and knew we had passed the entrance, the sign said the Abbey was 50 meters back in the direction we had just come from. We finally saw a small entry way and headed into a garden area, which was also a small cemetery. We found the entrance to the church, and headed inside. I do not believe the church interior was used in the movie, at least not that I could recollect. It was pretty plain inside, and dark.
Gate To The Abbey – Possibly Used In The Movie
We headed back outside and saw a small gate, which we thought might be the gate filmed in the movie when the Von Trapp chidden went to try and visit Maria after she left them to return to the Stift Nonnberg Abbey. I had expected to see the large cemetery area where the family was hiding from the Germans at the Abbey while trying to make their escape.
However, we did not see anything like that here, and found out later it was located in a completely different place. We also found out later that the Abbey was never actually used for any scenes in the movie, at least not the inside, which was off limits for filming. The scenes in the movie with the nuns in the Stift Nonnberg Abbey were all shot in Hollywood on a set.
Views of Salzburg From The Stift Nonnberg Abbey
We headed back to the car, wondering if it had really been worth all of the uphill climb to see what was there. Once back at the car, we decided to drive back to the apartment parking lot and park the car. We no longer needed it for any other sightseeing today. It was already almost 3:00 PM, and we had not eaten any lunch. We left some of the gear in the car and then started to walk back to old town Salzburg to try and find something to eat. It was only about a 12 minute walk from the car parking lot, so we started out.
We could not find anything at the small street vendors other than sausages, and we had already eaten enough of those over the past several days. Many of the outside eating areas were closed because of the rain. That made it even more difficult to find somewhere to eat that was not crowded and inside.
We finally saw a sign for an inside restaurant that served a lot of different types of food, from traditional Austrian to Indian, with Italian and pizza on the menu for good measure. It was already 3:30 PM, and we just needed something to eat.
We headed inside and then downstairs and were greeted by an enthusiastic Indian man, who took us to a table. We appeared to be the only ones there this late in the afternoon. We ordered a beer each and then both decided on two different pizzas. The food was just OK, maybe we should have looked a little longer for another restaurant, but we were full.
While we were eating, we both got a text message at the same time, and we knew it was our Covid PCR Test results. The text was in German, but it was easy to see the capitalized word “NEGATIV”. We were quite excited, now we could fly home on Friday without having to deal with any quarantine situation had we tested positive. There was a link to the actual test certificate which we downloaded to our phones.
We headed back outside and looked at a few more stores before leisurely heading back to the apartment. We had to stop by the car and get our gear we had left in it from earlier, and then headed to the nearby Spar grocery. We needed another bottle of wine, or maybe two, to celebrate the Negative Covid Test Results.
We left the Spar with our groceries and headed back to the apartment and got there just in time, it was starting to rain again. We relaxed for a while inside while the wine chilled in our small freezer. A while later, while we were watching some TV, we had a really heavy rainstorm come through with some gusty winds. Since the windows were open for ventilation, we had to rush around and close some of them to keep the wind and rain out of the apartment. We enjoyed our wine and some snacks, still relieved we had Negative Test results and could get home.
About 10:00 PM, we headed off to bed. With the windows closed for the rain, the street noise was much less noticeable, it was already cool inside, and we used a small table top fan for some background “white noise”. I had no trouble falling asleep tonight, it was much quieter and I was really tired.