Day 13--Hallstadt

Our two days in Salzburg complete, we headed for a short drive to Hallstadt, Austria, which is in the lake district. Because our two other attempts at riding a luge had been hampered by the weather, we took advantage of a brand new luging site to go for a quick ride. I didn't ride, but David did twice. On the first time he flipped over at the very end. He just picked himself up and went on.

Because we were deep in Sound of Music country, we stopped at the lake from the beginning of the movie and took advantage of the beautiful photo op. Then on we drove to Hallstadt, our destination for the day. It was a nice short drive and we were there before lunch.

Parking at the bottom of town, we walked to our hotel, which is right on the lak in the middle of town. These little lake towns are literally built "into" the mountain, so they go "UP, UP, UP" from the lake and provide some astounding views from the top. We checked in, got lunch and then headed around town for some shopping. Hallstadt is a salt mining town, so we bought some salt and a few other little souvenirs and then headed back to the hotel for a quick little rest before more exploring.

We decided to go visit the two churches in town. The first was a protestant church built by the city's miners. It's interior was very plain and the lay out was very weird, it being rather wide and shallow rather than deep like most churches. We then followed the signs to the Catholic church, which looked like it sat on top of the Protestant one, but it doesn't. You take several flights of stairs straight up to the cemetary and the church. The church itself is very small with lots of gold and gilt altar pieces and art work inside.

Then we headed out for the real thrill--the bone chapel. Because land space is so scarce in these little lake towns, they had to dig up the buried dead after so many years, clean the bones and bleach them, and then pain the skulls with decorative art work to commemorate the dead. They display them in a chapel. It was really quite impressive.

And the view from the top was amazing!

Since it looked like rain, we headed back DOWN to the hotel and rested until our group dinner--which was rather unimpressive.

I really enjoyed our break from our vacation in Hallstadt. It was such a pretty little town that I wanted more time to just lay back and explore...do a little hiking, rowing on the lake, chilling out in my great big room.