Our European Holiday Day 8 - Hallstatt

Today was a spectacular day in the Austrian Alps. We woke up this morning and found a cafe near our hotel where we ate the most delightful light and fluffy pastries. We then picked up our rental car. Renting a car in Europe is different than in the US. They struggled to find an automatic for us - I told them a manual would be fine, but they were able to locate an automatic. Rental cars in Europe are all European models - we ended up driving an Audi. It is a fun rental car.

We got out of the city and out into the Austrian alps. It is easy to see why they filmed so much of The Sound of Music in this area. The landscape is incredibly beautiful. We loved soaking in every moment of it. We were not in a hurry so we took plenty of opportunities along the way to stop and get out of the car and admire the scenery. Today was easily the coolest day of our vacation. It was a 30-degree swing from our days in Italy. It was nice to have some cooler weather - it felt like fall.

Our destination was Hallstatt. It is a village on Lake Hallstatt's western shore in Austria's mountainous Salzkammergut region. My friend, Sam Boyle, recommended we make time for a visit while we were in Austria. We are very grateful for his recommendation. Hallstatt is pretty spectacular.

The town itself is very small. We could walk across it in 15-20 minutes. The views of the town on the lake are picturesque. We enjoyed exploring the town and taking in the breathtaking scenery around us. As we walked we would pop our heads into the little shops. Many sold Christmas ornaments or other trinkets. We ended up buying a small plate with a picture of the city. We also bought a delicious treat. It was a super flaky buttery cylinder filled with cream.

We stopped at the protestant Church in Hallstatt. It is a simple, elegant church dating back to the mid-1800s (before that protestants were persecuted in this region). We also found some stairs and climbed up above the town to get panoramic views. Behind these stairs was a waterfall that feeds the stream running through the town.

We also visited the bone chapel. This building was behind the local catholic church. The graveyard in Hallstatt is very small. Since space was at a premium after a person had been buried for 10 years they would dig them up and take the large bones and the skull and deposit them in the bone chapel. They would also paint symbols and names on the skulls. Today it contains over 1200 skulls. Alison did not quite know what she was in for when we walked in. She was a good sport, but after a few minutes was ready to get out there.

We were starting to get hungry so we wandered through the town looking for somewhere to eat. Finding food we want to eat has been more difficult than we expected in Austria. We finally found a place that looked pretty good. Alison had a potato cream soup and an Austrian snack plate (sausage, cheese, and bread) while I had smoked meat with potato salad. It was a pretty good meal.

After lunch, we were a little torn on what to do next. We could have gone up a tram to a mountaintop near Hallstatt and toured the local salt mine (this region was always very rich because the salt mine above Hallstatt is the oldest salt mine in Austria). We decided to pass and instead, we rented an electric boat and rode around Hallstatt lake. This was so much fun. We loved riding around on this Alpine lake.

When we finished our boat ride we were ready to move on from Hallstatt. We originally planned to return to Salzburg to explore, but since we were really enjoying exploring the area outside of Salzburg we decided to head to visit Erlebnisburg Hohenwerfen. To get there we spent another hour driving through pristine alpine villages. This castle is really interesting because it is situated high on a hill in the middle of the alps. To get there we took a small tram up the mountainside. Right, when we arrived they were holding a falconry exhibition. It was awesome. They have falcons, red kites, bald eagles, and griffin vultures. The show was narrated in german so we had no idea what they were saying, but they pretty much just let these birds go and we got to watch them fly around the castle and surrounding landscape. They would throw meat up in the air and the birds would catch it or they would get the falcons to dive really quickly above our heads. It was very impressive.

After the show, we went on a guided tour of the castle. The regular tour was in german, but they had an English audioguide so we followed along and listened to the English version. We learned about the history of the castle - it actually started out as three separate castles and over time they connected it into one fortress. We saw where the residents lived and worked. We also saw the defenses of the castle and their collection of medieval torture instruments (which was very extensive - Alison hated this). The most interesting part of the tour was our climb up the bell tower, where they have a very old bell (and functioning clock system). The views from the bell tower were quite good.

We considered making one more stop after the castle but decided it was time to call it a day. We headed back to Salzburg. We were hungry so we headed over to St. Rupert's Fair. We walked among the many booths and ate everything that looked good. We had a chocolate-covered, jelly-filled giant pretzel (quite good), a gingerbread cookie (Alison picked the one that said rascal in german the lady selling to us thought that was quite funny), and pizza langos (a fried Hungarian food). It is all really good food. Before we found our way back to our hotel we bought one final treat - Mozartkugel. This is a chocolate candy named after Mozart and is a must-have treat in Salzburg.