Sorry this post is very post-dated. It took me a while to get around to this post.
After the chaos of International Week, I felt a detox was in order. And what better place to unwind than in the Alps?
Off we go to Hallstatt!
Hallstatt is definitely one of the most photographed places in Austria; when you type “Austria” into google images, Hallstatt is the first thing to show up.
All those are from Hallstatt ^^
The 3-hour train ride landed us on the side of lake Hallstatt opposite the town, so we had to take the ferry across the lake, which I was thrilled about – I love boats and ferrys 🙂
The weather, while being a tad wet and cold, was also beautiful. The clouds and fog made me very excited to take a million pictures haha .
Our travel group this trip consisted of Niamh, Joanne (Niamh’s friend visiting from Ireland), Paulina, Hazel, and Jessica (Another friend visiting from Ireland).
We started by just generally wandering through the old town.
We found a waterfall! Hahaha. Also the lake was so flat and still, it made for AMAZING reflections which I simply loved!
After a very hurried lunch, we caught a bus to Obertraun, a small village on the opposite side of Lake Hallstatt. We took the bus to the Dachstein Visitor Center. Dachstein offers several attractions, the one most promising to us that day was the Dachstein Ice Caves. From the visitor center we had to take a swinging gondola up to the Schönbergalm Lodge. The gondola was awesome. I do wish the clouds were more disperse because we spent a good chunk of the trip in fog haha.
From the lodge, we could keep going up to the 5 Finger Lookout, but because of the fog and clouds this seemed like a pointless trip. We contented ourselves with the ice caves. We had to hike up the mountain about 20 minutes to the cave opening. And that offered its own beautiful views. There was also snow up on the mountain still, which everyone seemed fascinated with – rookies.
The caves were pretty cool – lots of climbing haha. There were 100 stairs down and 500 stairs up, according to our guide. She was really nice and did the tour in both German and English. They did some cool things in the caves: the lights were all timed so as she talked certain parts of the cave would light up in correspondence to what she was saying. They also turned off after a certain amount of time (so they didn’t get too hot and melt the ice, I’m assuming). They were also pretty massive too! And there was a waterfall inside as well, but you could only really hear it, not see it.
We had to eventually make our way back down the mountain and back into town, where we did some tourist shopping.
Hallstatt reminds me a lot of Waterton (Canada). Its a tourist spot, but inside the town there isn’t much to do. You have to travel outside of the town to have anything worth doing. So make sure you plan ahead before you go in order to use your time well.
The one thing I wish we did was the Hallstatt salt mines, but we didn’t have time to do both the ice caves and mines, and so I went with the group decision, which was fine.
We had to make our way back across the lake on the ferry, and then catch the 3-hour train ride home.
It was a pretty low-key day, but was really relaxing and awfully beautiful as well. And I got to meet and hang out with some new friends! And who doesn’t like that?
See you around!
emma.k
Wandering Miss Emma.K 