Detour to Salzburg

From Geneva, we flew to Munich, Germany,but surprise! We were handed train tickets to Salzburg, Austria, the birthplace of Mozart the famous composer.

Sheila and I plotted our strategy on the train, coming up with new lyrics for the tune "16 going on 17" from the "Sound of Music" for one of the day's challenges. We were going to have that ready when we got to the Hellbrun Palace, where scenes from the musical was filmed.

Rolling into Salzburg, we crossed a river with steep cliffs on one side. At the top of the cliff, the imposing Salzburg Fortress stood guard over the town. As we learned during a tour of the structure that day, it had near been impenetrated or damaged, However, there was one small nick that occurred during a peasant revolt. We had to search the entire fortress to find it. We thought it would take forever, but we finally found someone who knew where it was and she told us the story behind it.

Then we rushed off to Hellbrun Palace to sing our song, as well as do a few other challenges. The highlight was a tour of the Trick Fountains that catch unsuspecting tourists unawares. We knew what to expect, so whenever we saw a lot of water on the ground, we figured that was an area to avoid. But, we still got wet a few times nonetheless.

We rushed through our challenges to save some time, but we both realized that was a mistake. We should have taken more time to enjoy these historic sites, but we were chasing points. And it hurt us in the end. We dropped to second place on the second day with an abysmal score.

Despite the bad scores, one video stood out among the rest and the judges made special note of it. Our "16 going on 17" rendition knocked their socks off: You can tell these two have amazing chemistry. They are having a great time and it shows.

"That to me was a huge compliment," says Sheila, "and it reflected how I feel."