Hallstatt and Salzburg, Austria

A little background before getting into the heart of this post, we discovered through planning this trip that a lot of the places we were going to were UNESCO World Heritage sites, and Hallstatt is no exception. I wanted this trip to be similar to the Amazing Race in which we would take in as much as possible in the short time we had in each place in order to see as much as possible. While looking up where to go in Austria, I discovered a Rick Steeves video on you-tube where there was an ancient salt mine. The part that caught my attention however was the big slides in the salt mine that you can slide down. It felt like an Amazing Race opportunity, so that's partly why we decided to go there...and because it's beautiful.

Hallstatt, Austria

The town of Hallstatt is a couple hour bus ride outside of Salzburg, and since our hostel was cheaper in Salzburg than what we could get in Hallstatt, we decided to visit it as a day trip from Salzburg, so it became a pretty packed day. We had to take 2 buses to get there, but we figured it out and made it to the town shortly before lunch. We wandered the streets a little to get a feel of the place and to find the information center where we could figure out how to get to the salt mine. 

The salt mine is in the mountain above Hallstatt. There is a funicular that can take you up, or there is a short-ish hike (I think about 2 hours or less) and that option is free. Naturally, we decided to get some exercise and save some cash by walking. The trouble is, we did not have much time since we had to make sure we didn't miss the last bus, and the trails were not well marked. Story of our lives, we got "lost". in quotations because we still knew where we were and how to get back, but we could not figure out which path led up the mountain. There were a lot of narrow paths and staircases, but most of them terminated at people's houses. Eventually, we gave in and walked over to the funicular to take it up the mountain. From the funicular it is about a 10 minute hike to the salt mine. 

At the salt mine, we had to put on these suits to cover our clothing before going in. Super attractive. Then the tour guide took us deep into the mountain and we learned about salt mining and its origins in Austria 2000 years ago. Crazy. Anyways, the highlight was in order to go deeper into the mountain mine, we got to take slides. It was sweet. The picture below is not super quality, but it can give a bit of a visual of what went down.

There was also a staircase for the faint of heart. This was a very unique stop on the trip and I would definitely recommend it if you're looking for something different to do. We were some of the only North Americans on the trip. It seems to be the kind of place Europeans go to on holidays. 

We spent our last day in Salzburg wandering the streets, saw the outside of Mozart's house (neither of us cared about going in), and we enjoyed the panorama views from the fortress Hohensalzburg. 

Beautiful city, beautiful weather, but many more fun times to come. Good solid start to the trip.

Fortress Hohensalzburg