Magical, Mystical Hallstatt!

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We were up early for our 4 hour train trip to Hallstatt. After an enormous breakfast (Tim) we hailed a taxi and headed to the station.

A small error (Vicki) saw us miss the first train and had an hour delay for the next one. lol

We travelled through some amazing country side mainly through the lakes district. There are many lakes in this area will small towns on their shores.

Arriving at Hallstatt we had to take a short ferry ride to the town. What a sight it was from the ferry!!!! Everyone on the boat fell silent as they madly clicked away on their cameras. Thank god for digital you can just go crazy, and we did.

Hallstatt is right on the edge of the lake with its houses built steeply up the sides of huge mountains that suround the entire town and lake.

After arriving we easily found our hotel, The Gruener Baum. It is situated on the waters edge and our room had a large outdoor area where we could down a couple of cold ones.

We soon set out to see the sights and work out our itineray for the next day and take a couple of hundred photos. We had dinner at our hotel where I had the local dish, trout fresh from the lake!! A jazz band at the hotel kept us entertained.

Tuesday morning saw us take a trip to the salt mines. We made our way to the funicular which was a short walk from the hotel. This was the steepest and longest funicular that we have been on. The view from the top was amazing. We had to don long pants and tops to enter the mine both for protection and warmth. We felt like we had gone back to our roots "Convicts" We walked 350metres into the mountain (trying not to think of those 2 in tassie) We learnt all about how the salt was formed deep in the mountain and also how is was mined many years ago. We had to slide down 2 rather impressive speed slides to reach the lower levels. Guess what? Tim had the fastest time 35.2kms.

We headed back down the mountain to have some lunch, a local snag and some fries.

The afternoon saw us take a short bus ride to the town of Obertran to visit the ice caves. We caught a gondola up and then had a steep walk to the mouth of the cave. It was here that is was apparent we had had a lack of foresight. Ice caves - cold, Feben's (Griswalds) dressed in shorts and tshirt's We read upon entering that the temp. was between 0 and +3, yep it was gonna be a cold 40 minutes. We proceded into the cave with some trepidation and ignored the looks of everyone else who was in their winter woolies. The caves were amazing with huge ice forms and frozen lakes. It was really great when you got a cold drip down the back of the tshirt.lol
We really enjoyed it but were happy to be back outside in the warmth.

We headed back to the hotel for a bit of r&r and a coldie before tea.

Dinner was at another local restaurant where Glenn and I both had the trout and Tim a steak.

Wednesday morning we were up early for our train trip to Innsbruck. We were a little sad to leave Hallstatt as it was a holiday that day and there was a special parade on the lake, but you just can't do it all.

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Comments

[Kaz]

Sigh..........
By the look of the photos, griswald's, this would be my favourite place so far. Looks awesome. Glad you are having a ball and looking forward to seeing all the photos. Love to all. Kaz xxxooo