Hallstatt was probably my favorite or second favorite place we stayed. It's a tough call between here and Lauterbrunnen. It was enticingly beautiful and set on the edge of a large lake. The town went up the side of a mountain and was quaint and cozy. The restaurant downstairs from the place we stayed was super friendly. When we asked what she recommended, she said her son (the chef) made a WONDERFUL lamb dish at home sometimes. So she went and asked if he'd make it for us, and he said okay. And she was right. It was SO good.
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This is the view from our room. It overlooked the center and all of its
tourists. You can get an idea of how small the town is and what it looked like,
however. I absolutely loved it here.
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This is the view of the two churches as seen from the room. The one up the
hill I believe is the Catholic church, while the one by the water is the
Protestant church. There was a significance to the location of the churches
but I've long forgotten it.
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When I say the town is ON the lake, I'm not exaggerating. This is looking
towards the end of town, just past the church.
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One of the tourists staying in the hotel with us mentioned the ice cave to us.
So we decided to take a bus up and visit it. There was a second cave as well
and we bought tickets to see both. This is looking down at the lake Hallstatt
is on from the ice cave. Hallstatt is the town on the far side of the water.
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This is Mischa cutting his toenails while we wait for our tour in the ice
caves. He is very pleased that I took this picture.
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The ice cave tour was REALLY neat. The water seeps into the caves during the
spring, while it's still cold underground and freezes creating these stalactites.
These are all blurry because they're handheld. The tour was in English and
German which was very helpful in understanding what he was talking about. ;)
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Another bit of ice in the cave. It was all lit up quite nicely. And I couldn't
help but think that NO WAY would they have these tours in America. The ground
was really quite slippery.
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This is the cave opening into the "Giant Cave". The tour was ONLY in German so
we were totally lost. We knew the word for cave, so the guide went something
like this. "blah blah blah cave blah blah kilometer blah blah blah cave" At
one point we did get into a room where they played a very strange slide show
on the wall with dramatic music. I have no idea what it was about.
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As we were getting ready for our tour, a storm started coming in. By the time
we were DONE with our tour, it was hailing. Quite hard. We were SOAKED by
the time we got back to the bus. Bleah!
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Since the next day it was also raining, we paid our money to see the Hall of
Bones. Because there was so little ground space, you only had a limited time
in the graves. After 7 years or so, you were dug back up and then your relatives
would decorate your skull and it would be placed into this room. After about
the 60s, this stopped because cremation was okayed by the Catholic Church.
The room itself was really quite small.
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By the day we were leaving, it had cleared up, and I took one more picture
along the lake line as it was sunnier.
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And one more picture of the center, before we left.
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All photos copyright Anne Sullivan