Days 5 through 7

We have had quite the busy last three days and we need to catch up on our blogging!

On Friday, we drove to Hallstatt, Austria, to see the picturesque town and to tour the salt mine in the mountains above the town. We began our visit with a funicular ride to the top of the mountain, and then we climbed the rest of the way to the salt mine on foot. They gave us funny overclothes with padded hineys to wear on our tour, and they gave us a shot of schnapps to warm us up for the underground tour. We walked into the mountain, then visited a few caverns inside where they used to leach the salt out of the rock with water. We also rode a couple of long wooden slides inside the mountain (hence the need for the padded pants). It was an interesting tour. It was one of the few mines we've been in that actually contained copious examples of the substance being mined - the walls were covered in salt crystals. The tour ended with a train ride through a tiny tunnel out to the side of the mountain.




From there, we walked back down to the funicular, and then rode it back down into Hallstatt. We wandered around Hallstatt for a while and ate a very late lunch there before heading back to our hotel for the night.




Saturday was spent touring the Konigssee, which is the lake right by our hotel here in Germany. It's been very well preserved from pollution over the last 100 years or so, and is quite pristine. We took a boat cruise across the lake to the far side, and from there we hiked to another lake and on around it to see a waterfall. We knew the waterfall was there, as we had seen it through a break in the clouds from the boat, but it wasn't until we reached the other side of the little lake that it appeared to us again. We were glad it finally did. We hiked back to the boat and rode back across the Konigssee to Schoenau. We made a quick stop at the hotel for afternoon tea (ok, no tea, but definitely cheesecake and strawberry shortcake, and doughnuts) for another late lunch. Then we moved ourselves and all our dirty laundry into Berchtesgaden to visit the waschsalon, or laundromat, as we call them here. After that, we went out for dinner at a little local restaurant, and then called it a night.





Today (Sunday), we visited some attractions near the town of Werfen, Austria. Our first stop was the Eisriesenwelt, which is an ice cave. It was a fantastic experience; one that would probably never be allowed in the US due to its total non-ADA accessible-ness. We drove up the side of a mountain to a parking lot. From there, we hiked about 20 minutes farther up the mountain to a cable car, which took us up another very steep and very high amount, and from there we hiked another 20 minutes up to the entrance of the ice cave. Once inside, we climbed another 700 or so steps UP into the ice cave, for a total of about a 1 km trek into the cave, the entirety of which was coated in amazing ice formations (sorry, no photos allowed inside, so check it out on their website). I have no idea how anyone ever decided to try and explore this mountain enough to find this place, but I'm glad they did. It was amazing.





On our way back down, we stopped for a quick bite to eat at a snack stand, then continued over to another attraction in Werfen: Berg Hohenwerfen. The castle itself was cool to look at, but the main feature of this visit was the falconry exhibition. We watched eagles and falcons and vultures and owls swoop over our heads while a four man brass ensemble played accompanying music. It was pretty cool. The birds were allowed to fly all over the place, right over the crowd. The handlers tossed dead mice up into the air for the birds to catch (sometimes they missed and they fell on the crowd, which was hilarious). It was a pretty good show.






After the castle, we headed back to our hotel for dinner. Tomorrow we drive to Luzern, Switzerland, with a stopover in St. Gallen, Switzerland, to see the library.