Hi Everyone!!

The Hills are Alive with the sound of Bekkiiiiiii

We are in the beautiful city of Salzburg, home of the Sound of Music. We arrived here yesterday afternoon and settled into our rooms before running out the door again to jump on board the sound of music tour bus! She tried to convince Mike to stay at the hostel but he refused and actually seemed to enjoy himself once the tour kicked off!

We got to visit lots of the different sights around the city which were beautiful even if you were not a fan of the movie. ie....the outdoor gazebo for 'I am 16 going on 17', the 'do re me' gardens the lake and the trees where the children played and fell into and the exterior of the home. We then travelled to a tiny village called Monsee where theý also filmed the scene where maria got married to Mr Von Trapp. The tour was well done with music being played throughout the journey and the climb into the mountains was breathtaking.

After the tour we visited the Mirabell gardens which were very beautiful and took afew photos. We then found out way back to the hostel for a quiet evening.

Today we got up and went to the internet cafe to load up all of our photos which we hope you have enjoyed and then went to a little italian restaurant to get Bek some food since she slept in past breakfast.

We then joined our tour to the ice caves in the Austrian Alps. The tour took us more than 1700 metres above sea level! this is a long long long way up which included lots of hiking and puffing and panting along with a cable car ride to the top. This cable car is the steepest in Europe and was built in the 50s so you can imagine how excited Mike was to be riding this baby to the top!

When we got to the caves it was minus 1 degree and freezing...literally. We had dressed for the occasion though so it wasnt to uncomfortable. Our tour took an hour and went more than 1km into the caves inside the mountain with over 1400 steps to conqour. Inside these caves we got to see some amazing natural sculptures and sheets of ice. One was even 25 metres high and 25 metres thick. We took some photos but they dont do it justice and we had to sneak them since they asked us not to take any at the beginning.

I forgot to mention that the walk up was beautiful, Mike got his first glimpse of snow on the top of the mountains surrounding us. The forests and the rivers running through the mountain provided us with some truly breathtaking views and some really cool photos so it sort of made up for the tough, steep walk we had to do. We also got to see a really cool castle on the top of a mountain! Whoever owned this caslte would have had the best views in the world whilst they sat on the toilet which faced the alps.

On the bus ride home everyone went to sleep as they were all exhausted. We have just had dinner in the hostel...shnitzel of course! And we are now having another quiet evening after our strenuous exercise today and a good sleep because we are off to Munich tomorrow.

In the Czech Republique you greet your friends with hello by saying 'ahoy' and if you want to say yes you say 'ah no' this is very confusing stuff but we enjoyed the ahoys immensly. You also say dick-wee for thankyou which we always had a giggle about too!

We would place an intersting argument of the week in here but we dont seem to have any to say...but stay tuned there is bound to be a good one brewing around the corner.

Lots of love,

Maria and Mike