Advertisement
Published: September 23rd 2011
On Wednesday morning we left Berchtesgaden with beautiful blue skies (finally)! We caught a taxi to Salzburg and then two trains to get to Hallstatt, arriving at around 3pm. We caught the ferry across the Hallstatter See (lake) and arrived at our hotel. First impressions of Hallstatt were fantastic – its possibly even more beautiful than Berchtesgaden! Its even smaller and the way it clings to a tiny strip of land between the shoreline and the mountain is quite breath-taking. It has a nice village feel – our hotel is located right between the lake and the town square – perfect location. We went for a walk around the town in the arvo and then enjoyed a bottle of red on our terrace in the evening before dinner.
Yesterday morning we caught a bus to the Duchstein Mountain where we took a cable car (another one, poor Mike is doing well considering his fear of heights!) through the clouds and to the Duchstein Ice Caves. We took an approx. 1 hr tour through the Giant Ice Cave – quite impressive! And again we were very cold, its exactly 0C throughout most of the cave. When we came out of the
cave, the clouds had dispersed and we had an awesome view down to the Hallstatter See. We then took the cable car further up the mountain to 2100m and walked to the 5Fingers look-out, with views of a glacier along the way. The 5Fingers look-out was quite amazing, extending straight out from the mountain over the abyss...
This morning we took the ferry across the lake to the Hallstatt train station and then did a nice walk around the southern half of the Hallstatter See, passing Obertraun (another little village) on the way. We then hired a little electrical boat and cruised on the lake for awhile – which was really peaceful and enjoyable. The lake is amazingly still and the weather today is just beautiful, sunny and 20C. Then we caught the funicular up to the entrance of the famous Hallstatt pre-historic salt mines (but didn’t go in), instead we had a lovely late lunch on the terrace of a restaurant, gazing down at Hallstatt from several hundred metres above!
Tomorrow we leave this cute little village for Vienna – the final destination of our trip!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.219s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 7; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0453s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Emma
non-member comment
austria
Hey guys - did Mike dare to go out on the 5fingers lookout?! It did look a bit scary. Did you see any of the 'no kangaroos in Austria' souvenirs?! I thought they were very cool. I wonder if it was the Asian or American tourists that mixed us up.... See you soon, Em :-)