Today we headed to Hallstatt, Austria.
It's one of my favorite towns ever, but it's basically in the middle of nowhere on the western side of Austria.
We needed to catch the direct train at 9:44 am
By 9:37 am we were still in line to buy tickets...
Thankfully it all worked out because our platform was close and we were able to jump right on.
We were pretty tired... I only fell asleep for about 20 minutes because I was afraid of missing our stop... Meryl still caught it on camera though.
Meryl fell asleep for about 3.5 hours out of the 4 hour trip:
Honestly, I was glad to be awake... the countryside of Austria is some of the most beautiful in the world.... it really does make you want to sing the hills alive!
Here is the little station for Hallstatt across the lake from the actual town
We hopped off and walked down to the lake to catch the ferry across
I felt very nautical while sailing on a boat wearing stripes
Just look at this place!
Hallstatt is a little salt mining town that couldn't be more picturesque
This is the view from the little bed and breakfast we are staying in
Our bed and breakfast is so nice... it's a blessing to be in a private room in a quiet place.
We are getting sick of waking up to new people (scantily clad) in our room every night.
Here is our room-
All those papers are bus and train schedules ... in German.
I'm in the process of figuring out how to get us from here to Salzburg tomorrow afternoon so we can catch our train to Venice tomorrow night... so we'll see how it goes.
Here is where we eat breakfast in the morning with a view of the lake,
the sunning room,
the sauna,
and the living room. Nice huh?
You can basically walk through the whole town in 15 minutes...but there is still plenty to see.
This is the town square.
As you can see the clouds rolled in and it was kinda wet the rest of the day... luckily it wasn't so wet that we couldn't walk around the town and enjoy the sites - we did decide to put of hiking until tomorrow though.
This is the cemetery- it's set on the hill by one of the churches in town (not the one you see behind me)
Everything is so perfectly manicured and loved
Not one grave was forgotten or neglected.
This is the inside of the church on the hill
And this is a view of the church at the bottom of the hill.
This is the bone house.
Basically, the tradition was started in the early 1700s to bury your love ones after they die, dig them up again after 20 years or so, throw away all the bones but the skull, paint it, and put it in this cave-type thing. It's kind of a weird tradition they don't practice so much anymore (I think the last person put in here was in 1995 and it has to be in your will if you want to be dug up and stuck in here now)
Some of the skulls were pretty amazing though with all the flowers painted on them.
I would have taken more pictures, but a storm broke out while we were in there and the electricity went out.
It was kinda freaky being in there without the lights
(I was going to put more pictures on here of the skulls from when I was here before, but I think you get the idea)
We ate dinner at the hotel we stayed at when my family came here a few years ago (the yellow house on the right)
They had goulash and I wanted Meryl to try it :)
It's basically a stew with beef - and I think she liked it!
Here we are at the town square again...we only walked around for a little while, but we probably passed this 5 times.
Yes, the town really is that small :)
To top off the night we benched a little on the way home.
As you can probably tell, there isn't much of a night life here in Hallstatt so Meryl and I were in by about 8:30 just relaxing and enjoying the views from our windows.
Tomorrow we are off to hike to the salt mines!
Love,
Ale
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