Today is our 13th Anniversary – Happy Anniversary to Us!
As the weather forecast had predicted, it did rain last night, and actually rained really hard. I was worried about the skylight type window in the bathroom ceiling, we had been leaving it open, open meaning that one end is tilted open, which is the low end. I got up to use the bathroom, and sure enough, there was a little rain water leaking in onto the floor, so I closed it. It was really raining hard outside, harder than any rain we have had on the trip to date.
Cloudy Morning in Hallstatt
We did sleep in, at least Stephanie did, I was up at my normal time, about 6:45 AM today. It was still raining outside, and I knew we were just going to relax this morning hoping for the weather to clear some later in the day. It was interesting to see the low clouds against the mountains and over the lake from our balcony door.
I made my coffee and had a apple filled type of sweet roll for breakfast, and then started on the blog, still trying to catch up on the blog posts and also trying to get some photos uploaded into the photo albums.
I also spent some time trying to find Covid PCR testing locations in Salzburg. I finally found a good site online that listed several different testing locations in the city. Prices for PCR tests ranged from Euro 45.00 to Euro 65.00, still better than the CHF 80.00 we paid for a cheap rapid test in Switzerland. I think we will use one that is located about a 12 minute walk from our apartment in Salzburg, it is not the cheapest, but is close enough to walk to. One other facility was north of town, and we would need to stop by there on the drive into Salzburg to our apartment. It was not really on our way into town.
The cheapest one was at the train station, but we were reluctant to go there, they did not take appointments. We already had a bad experience waiting in the long lines at the train station in Lucerne for Covid Information. That previous experience made us think it might also be really crowded at the train station in Salzburg, people would be trying to get tests before barding trains.
We have been dealing with head colds for the past few days, so we are hoping that “colds” is all we have. We have never felt bad, but with Covid, who knows. There have been a lot of people around us coughing and blowing their noses in the past several days, so we think we are just like them, fighting head colds and not Covid. However, the possibility is on our minds until we know for sure. Testing turn around here is pretty fast, usually less than 24 hours for a PCR test, so we thought about delaying our tests until Wednesday, getting our results Thursday and flying home Friday. We will make that call tomorrow morning when we get up, either test Tuesday, the earliest we can test within our three day window before our flight, or wait until Wednesday.
Stephanie slept in until about 10:30 AM, and she enjoyed the extra sleep time. This was the latest she had slept in on the entire trip. There was no point in her getting up earlier, the weather was overcast with a light drizzle. It finally stopped raining at around 11:00 AM.
Funicular to the Salt Mine Above Hallstatt
Since the rain had stopped, we finally got ready and left the apartment for the short walk to the Hallstatt Salt Mine Ticket Office. There is a funicular ride up the hill to the mine, which is right above Hallstatt. The mine is the reason the town is here, it is the oldest salt mine in the world, dating back 7,000 years, and is still in operation.
Dressed in my Miner’s Clothes
We purchased our tickets at the ticket office. The tickets included the funicular ride up and down from the town to the salt mine, and the salt mine tour itself. We rode up on the funicular and headed toward the building for the salt mine tour. It was quite a hike up some stairs and then about 850 meters on an uphill trail to another building. By the time we arrived there, we were both dripping in sweat.
It was very humid from the rain, and not all that cool outside. Once we arrived in the building, we had to put on special clothes over our normal clothes, a long pair of pants and a long sleeved coat. That did not help our sweating.
We put our backpacks inside the free lockers, we were only allowed to take cameras and phones on the tour. Then, we went into a room with about 30 other people, and waited for the tour to begin. This room was not any cooler, and we were still sweating, especially now with the extra layers of clothes.
It seemed like forever, but about 12 minutes later, our tour guide arrived and we headed out. We had to climb up a bunch of stairs to get to the actual mine opening, and guess what, we were still sweating. At least it was a little cooler outside than in the building waiting room.
Inside The Salt Mine
We knew the mine tour itself would be cooler, it was advertised, or warned, that the the mine was a constant 8 degrees C, or about 46 degrees F. We entered the mine and then walked about 800 meters to the first room where our guide explained about the history of the salt mine and how the salt had been trapped there from prehistoric times before the Alps were formed.
There were several stops along the way to show various aspects about the mining operation and its history. There is a lot of archeological work going on around the mine, many of the miners are buried on the hillsides around the mine from the earliest days the mine was in operation.
Stephanie On The Wooden Slide
One of the coolest things were the wooden slides, which were literally slides that were used to go to another lower level in the mine. The first set of slides was 12 meters (39 ft) long, and it was fun to go down. A little later, we went down one that was 64 meters (209 ft) long, and we went a lot faster.
At the end of the tour, we all rode out on a long mine train, it was single row seating, several cars long, we were all sitting in a single line straddling the long wooden seats.
The Mine Train
The entire mine tour was about an hour and 15 minutes long, and of course, at the end, we had to go up even more steps to get back to the building to turn in our special miner clothes and get our gear from the lockers.
It was about 3:00 PM and we had not yet eaten lunch. We headed to the restaurant in a building near the funicular, and sat at a table.
Salt Mine Restaurant
No one was coming out to serve us and after about 15 minutes, a server came out and said, no more food orders were being taken ad that the kitchen was closed. There were a lot of upset people, we had not seen any serving hours, and people were still eating when we arrived. Our only choice now was to ride the funicular down to the bottom and eat in Hallstatt.
Views Of Lake Hallstatt From The Salt Mine
We stopped at the apartment and dropped off our gear and put on more comfortable shoes before heading out to get a bite to eat. We stopped at one place we had looked at the other day but it had been really busy at their outside tables, and we could not get seated. Today, they were less busy and we got a nice table by the lake. We will complain a little here, all of the restaurants in this area serve almost exactly the same food. Stephanie was able to get a pasta, sort of a lasagna made with spinach and feta cheese. I was not that hungry and did not want to spend a lot for another Weiner Schnitzel, or Beef Stew, so I ordered the grilled sausage, but with boiled potatoes instead of French fries. My meal was good, but Stephanie said hers did not have that much flavor. We also ordered two of their 0.50 L House Beers, which were pretty good.
After eating, we headed to the local bakery and picked up a pretzel and a cheese twist for later. Then we headed back to the apartment to do a little packing and then to relax. We did take advantage of the large garden tub to relax in and soak our sore muscles while enjoying some wine.
We heated our leftover pasta from the other night’s dinner and ate that along with some bread, just a little snack for dinner after the large and very late lunch. Not much of an Anniversary Dinner, but it was still good, and all we wanted to eat. We watched a movie in German which was pretty good, we could get the gist of the movie, but of course, not the detail, It was a German film, we could tell the actors were speaking German, and not English that was dubbed over.
We are planning on staying here until our 10;00 AM check-out time in the morning, it is only about an hour and 20 minutes drive to Salzburg, our next destination. We had been exchanging emails with that property manager about check-in, and they told us they will not be able to let us know if we can check in early in Salzburg until sometime tomorrow morning. Based on that, there is no need to rush to get there if we can’t check in until the normal time in the afternoon.
We loved our stay in Hallstatt, but definitely think the three nights we were here was more than sufficient. The town is small, and there is just not anything more to do here if we had stayed longer.
We headed to sleep about 10:00 PM.