Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Salzburg and the Salzkammergut


Monday, 9/21
Today we are heading to the village of Hallstatt and the beautiful Hallstattersee (lake). It's a very picturesque little town with a salt mine nearby. Our plan is to tour the salt mine, see the town, and head over to a nearby village to make the trip up to the Krippenstein Five Fingers viewing platform.  

We arrived at the salt mine just before 10am and took the funicular up 838 meters to the place where you then walk up another few hundred meters to the building where you start the tour process. I say "process" because you have to wear a special suit to go into the mine. They sort of resemble scrubs, it's a jacket and pants but the pants have a special patch sewn on the rear end because you actually slide down two long wooden slides to get into the mine. The rear patch is to overcome friction and avoid splinters! So we suited up and waited for our tour guide.

The tour starts with walking up several flights of stairs to the mine entrance, then you walk a long, dark series of tunnels deep into the mine. Down the first slide- whoosh! Walk a bit more, then down the second, longer slide. Mike and I decided to do this one together and they timed us at 26km/hr. Not bad, but the guide did it in 32km/hr. She does get a lot more practice at it tho ;) We walked through the mine and learned about the importance of the salt trade and the wealth that it brought to the area.  At the end of the tour, you jump on a wooden bench-like seat except you actually straddle it, and a little train pulls you out of the mine.

Once we left the mine, we headed to a viewing platform where you get a really good view of the little town of Halllstatt and the lake from about 900 meters above. Took a few pictures then headed down to the funicular for the trip back to the bottom.

We walked into Hallstatt to have some lunch by the lake and took some pictures of the charming little town, then took off for the Krippenstein 5 Fingers lookout platform.

The 5 Fingers is a series of 5 viewing platforms that are 4x1 meter in size and extend out over a precipice of the mountain.  The platform is about 1 mile above the lake at Hallstatt and is pretty much straight up. You have to take a series of 2 cable cars to get up there and then hike (steeply) for about 20 minutes to the platform. We got up there kind of late so we only had about 45 minutes until the last cable car going down. We absolutely did not want to get stuck up there for the night, so we really made good time getting to the platform and getting some pictures.  The view from up there is just unbelievable, you can't even do it justice in pictures. We took pictures anyway of course, to commemorate our efforts! Then we hiked back up along the seemingly even steeper trail (same trail, just seemed steeper at this point). Slow going this time but we made it back for one of the last cable cars and of course it was crammed with people cuz nobody wanted to get left behind. Anyway, made it back down to the bottom and looked back up again at where we had just been - so hard to believe we were that high up.

Drove back down to Salzburg and had dinner at a little Italian place. Then it was Advil and bed - in that order.


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