Europe with Ali Part III: Austria and The Dolomites, high above the earth and well below ground

Sorry for the long gap in the story here, but this continues my European adventure with Alison last summer May 2018......

It's amazing to me that we only spent 2 nights in Hallstatt, as the wonders could have filled a week.  After driving through the steep Alpine valleys, the view opened up to a picturesque Austrian town and a large lake, rimmed with the reflections of mountains.  I posted about our Austrian dinner in the last post, so here I will cover the next 2 days in Hallstatt.

Just to give you a taste of the architecture, this was the view from our room the next morning.

We ate our included gourmet Austrian breakfast and headed for the World Heritage Site Dachstein Salzkammergut!  We took several cable cars up up and away into the mountains and when we got out, we were surrounded by glaciers and snow and felt as though we were on top of the world!  On the way up, we even saw a chamois hoofing it up some snowy rocks.

Behind Alison, here, you can see the cluster of buildings on the lake that make up the entire town of Hallstatt.  You can also see a diagonal line going up above the town--- this is the funicular railway line to the level of the salt mines that we went to the next day.  It is amazing how far above that we are here.

We checked out a lot of rocks-- all limestone, but no fossils visible.  The handlens did make for some some cool macro photos of flowers, though.

And, the limestones that were sticking out of the snow had interesting karst and freeze-thaw weathering features.

We took a gondola to the middle height in order to do some cave tours.  Alison had been to an "ice cave" before, but had heard this one was the best.  Water drips into the cave throughout the warmer months and freezes, making all the familiar speleothems (stalagmites, terraces, etc.) out of glistening ice instead of travertine.  They took some liberties with the lighting, which made it even more magical.  This was one of the most spectacular sights I have ever seen!

You can see some people along the left side of the next image, showing off the size of this ice column and cavern-- breathtaking!

The expression on my face says it all....

Alison: "Hey, Laura, what did you think of the ice cave?"

We did some serious hiking in order to get to these cave tours.  We were running late for the other tour and ended up running up these switchbacks!

After a full day of fun, we headed back to Hallstatt, where we went to our new hotel.  The shuttle driver was remarkably friendly!  After some confusion, we found out they did not have a room for us at the main hotel, but were putting us up on the top floor of this 500-year-old house! 

(Alison for scale)

After a restful night, we headed up the next day to take a tour of the salt mine, Saltzwelten.  We took a steep incline train called a funicular up the mountain (but only about 1/8 the elevation we explored yesterday).  It seemed strange to be going up in order to explore a mine, but they had carved the mine into the side of the mountain.  We could tell we were at a lower elevation than the day before since we found ourselves surrounded by beautiful wildflowers, lush habitats, and a warmer climate.  They had some buildings with exhibits along the path to the mine, which made for fun photos.

The slugs were massive, easily as long a my hand!

The salt mine tour was a theatrical marvel with lots of special effects.  The guide was decked out in traditional garb and had loads of enthusiasm, we got to slide down slides that the miners used to get from one level to another, and we even rode a tiny train out of the mine at the end.  The sparkling salt veins in the mine were also beautiful.  We also learned that people had been mining the salt for thousands of years and this precious resource is one reason that Austria has had a booming economy.  (Sorry no photos inside the mine allowed...).  After our tour, we wandered the grounds some more and found scenic overlooks galore. The Dachstein Salzkammergut region from yesterday is on top of the mountains across the lake in the next photo.

The sun lit up the hamlet of Hallstatt at the perfect moment for this next photo.

After taking the funicular back down the mountainside, we explored the town square and shops and then drove back towards Sean in Italy.  On the drive home, we saw a radio tower and stopped to get a photo for Sean.  Then, we realized just how picturesque the valley was and got a few more photos.  Goodbye, Austria!  I hope we meet again.

The next day, we slept in after our whirlwind tour of Austria and then Alison took me on a short driving tour of The Dolomites, the impressively jagged mountain range near their house.  The spectacular scenery is not fully captured in these photos, but I tried. 

The mountains were so steep that we spotted many rockslide scars, exposing huge faces of rock.

Click here for our next "local" roadtrip, when Ali took me to Croatia, the next day....