Today we are travelling by car to the town of Hallstatt, Austria. Hallstatt is purported to be the town that was the inspiration for the village in the animated movie Frozen. It is only about an hour and 15 minutes drive from our hotel in Fusch an der Großglocknerstraße, and check in to our apartment there is not until later this afternoon, so we were in no hurry to get up early or leave the hotel before check-out at 11:00 AM.
I slept in until about 7:30 AM, and got up to do my daily entries for the blog. It was unfortunate that the only coffee in the room appeared to be instant, we only had a kettle for heating water, and there were some long thin packets of what I assumed were instant coffee to add to the hot water. I passed on making any coffee in the room today, I will just wait until we go to the hotel’s included breakfast buffet a little later.
I woke Stephanie up about 8:30 AM, and we both got ready and re-packed our suitcases. These one night stops are difficult, we never seem to be able to find the clothes we want without almost destroying our suitcase packing. Repacking is easier since we only have to get the suitcases into a car, and don’t have to have everything packed into them. I can leave out my backpack and keep out some camera equipment instead of having to stow everything away like we do when we travel by train.
We headed to breakfast in the hotel lobby at about 9:15 AM. They only serve breakfast until 11:00 AM, so we did not want to get there too late and get the leftovers from their buffet spread. The breakfast was fairly extensive, one of the best we have seen. There were fried eggs, sausage, and many types of breads, cheeses and meats. They also served fruit and several types of sweet rolls and cakes.
We picked out our table and then got our food. It was really good, we even went back for seconds. Stephanie was amazed that they even had watermelon, which she said was very good.
With full bellies, we headed back to the room to do our last of the packing and then we just rested, waiting for check-out at 11:00 AM. About 10:45 AM, we took our suitcases down to the car and then went back to the room for the smaller items. We checked out just a little before 11:00 AM, and started our drive to Hallstatt.
I had read in our apartment reviews for Hallstatt that the “grocery store” in Hallstatt was just a small, local run store and that the prices were very high, the selection poor, and some people even complained about them selling expired food items. I found a Billa Grocery on Google that was not far from Fusch an der Großglocknerstraße, and had already saved it as a Google Map destination, so we headed there first. The only issue with this store was that it was still over an hour to Hallstatt from there, and we had no way to keep cold items cold for the remainder of the drive.
We decided we would get all of the non-perishable items now, and hope to find another grocery store in one of the towns we pass through on the drive to Hallstatt. It was just too difficult on a cell phone to try and do a search for other grocery stores on the way, it was hard to see if they were on the actual driving route we needed to follow to get to Hallstatt. This was compounded by the fact that in order to find the chain grocery stores on Google Maps, it has to be entered by each chain store’s name instead of using a general “grocery store” search. The general grocery store search term mostly brings up small local stores that are not part of the larger chains.
We tried to find a closer store for about 10 minutes out in the Billa parking lot before giving up and just buying what we needed here, sans any cold items. After loading our purchases into the car, we started our drive to Hallstatt. Most of the route was on secondary roads, but a small part was on the expressway, with higher speed limits.
The last half hour or so was on some pretty winding secondary roads, which were fun to drive on at the 80 kph posted speed limit. We have a diesel car, and although it is fuel efficient, it just does not have much power and requires a lot of downshifting when going around curves, especially on hills. It has a 6 speed manual transmission, but we have to go to second gear a lot to have enough power to accelerate after a sharp steep curve. Since the engine is only 1.5 liters, it is just too small to have any power.
We were about 15 minutes away from Hallstatt when we saw another grocery store, so we decoded to stop. It was not part of any chain we had stopped at so far, and it was not very large, but had enough of the perishable items we needed to purchase, some cheeses, yogurt and sliced meats.
Before we left Fusch an der Großglocknerstraße, we had sent a message to the property in Hallstatt using the Booking.com messaging system to inquire about arriving early, about 1:00 PM, and if the apartment would be available for early check-in. We checked for a response at the grocery and had heard nothing back. We were a little concerned because this was the property we had an issue with the fraud alert on our Costco Citicard Visa when we had first arrived in Lucerne after our flight. We had a confirmation on the Booking,com app. and it showed we had already paid, but the lingering concern about not receiving a reply to our questions about the payment issue a couple of weeks ago, and now not hearing back about the early check-in had us a little concerned about the reservation. Of course, we had no choice but to go there and see what would happen, so we got back into the car and headed to Hallstatt.
When we arrived at the property, there was an older couple on the patio of their apartment, which is below two others that are rentals. They seemed to be expecting us, so that was a good sign. At first, the super friendly lady, who referred to herself as “grandmother”, since she was actually the grandmother of the owner, could not find us on the list. Then we were worried again, but she finally found our name and all was good with our reservation. She initially had us confused with the other apartment renters who were also arriving today.
We were on the top floor in Apartment 2, and it was exactly as we had reserved. We unloaded the car and took everything upstairs. The apartment was great, it has a nice balcony overlooking the lake, which is across the street. There is a large bedroom, and large bathroom with a garden tub and a shower stall. The den area was very large, and so was the kitchen.
Walking Around Hallstatt
After getting everything put away and organized, and starting a load of laundry in the washing machine, we headed out to walk through the town. It was about 2:00 PM, and Stephanie wanted to find the Catholic Church and find out what time Mass was this evening. We had information about there being a Saturday night Mass, but it looked like it was only held on the first and third Saturdays of the month, and this was the fourth Saturday of this month.
Catholic Cemetery
The Catholic Church was not hard to find other than it was up on a hill. Google Maps took us there, but not on the walking path that we needed to take to actually go up the hill to be at the church. Google Maps led us down the main pathway, but on a lower lever, then told us to take a left where there was no path, just a cliff under the church that we could see up on the hill about 3-4 stories up.
We backtracked to where we had seen a pathway head off to the left, and took that, eventually finding a sign pointing to the church. Once there, we saw a notice about masses for this weekend. Unfortunately, there had been some type of special Mass at noon today up on a mountain. There was nothing about a Saturday night Mass, and for Sunday, they were not having a Mass, but were just having a ecumenical service. This was similar to the situation we had run into in Pontresina. Of course, we were having to use the Google Translate app’s scan function to interpret the notification, which was all in German. Unlike Pontresina, there was no other option for a Mass this weekend, so we accepted that we were not going to be able to attend Mass in Hallstatt, but that we had tried.
Stephanie’s New Friend
We visited the inside of the church and Stephanie found a cat in a pew that she was able to hold and pet. Then we looked around outside at the cemetery, which had many small plots, most likely everyone buried there had been cremated to save space.
We were hungry, and this church excursion had taken longer than expected, so we headed back down to the main walking path and eventually found somewhere to sit and get a small bite to eat. The only small serving that they had was sausage and fries, so we ordered that to split as well as two 0.50 L beers. We had a great table on a slightly elevated deck that was right next to the main walking path, so we spent a lot of time people watching while we ate and drank.
Lake Hallstatt
We were enjoying the relaxation, so we ordered another beer. We saw a strange mix of people here, there are quite a lot of younger people, and many of them were dressed up like they were in a large city shopping mall, not in a small Austrian lakeside town. There were also a lot more Asian people here, we were not sure from which countries, China or Japan, or even elsewhere, but more than we had seen anywhere else on our trip so far. There were also more tour groups here, we could see them following their tour leader, easily identified as the person always holding some type of highly visible item everyone in the group could see.
When we went to pay, our waiter told us an amount, then took out a piece of paper and added it up, coming up with a slightly lower amount by 1.00 Euro. We gave him a Euro 50.00 bill and we got our change, but something did not seem right, and we fairly quickly determined we had been shorted Euro 10.00. It is not always easy to figure out the change given back on the fly because of the Euro 2.00 and 1.00 coins that are also given back in addition to the larger denomination bills for change. I went to seek out our waiter and he seemed to know something was not right, but seemed very apologetic. He asked why we had not said something at the table, and I told him we had to figure it out just like he had to add up our bill on his paper. He laughed and gave us the other 10.00. It was hard to tell if it was a genuine mistake or not, but everything worked out.
View From Our Balcony
We visited a couple of stores before heading back to the apartment and sitting out on our balcony, watching the sun beginning to slip behind the mountains. It had been fairly warm this afternoon, about 77 degrees, but as the sun went behind the mountains, it really started to cool off quickly. We enjoyed some wine out on the balcony, watching all of the people that were here just for the day beginning to leave Hallstatt. Our apartment is located on the main road, so there is a little bit of road noise, but as the traffic thinned out after everyone left, it was much more quiet and pleasant outside.
We started our showers and unfortunately, while Stephanie was showering first, we had an issue with the shower drain that caused a minor flood in the bathroom. There was only about a 1/2 inch lip from the shower floor up to the bathroom floor to hold back any excess water, and with just a slight drain backup, it easily flowed out of the showier and onto the bathroom tile, and even a little bit went out onto the laminate floor outside the bathroom. We cleaned that up with some of the extra towels.
The flooding was caused by the long shower side drain channel being clogged up with hair and other disgusting things. Once we cleaned that out, the shower drain worked fine, but the overflow had caused a bit of a mess. We went ahead and washed all of the towels we used for soaking up the water. It was obvious that has happened before, the laminate flooring right outside the bathroom was already bulging in a couple of the joints from being wet in the past.
After all of that cleanup, we decided that with the late lunch we had eaten at 4:00 PM, we were not that hungry and would be okay if we just had a few snacks this evening instead of going out for a full blown meal.
We relaxed watching a little German TV before we headed to sleep about 10:00 PM.