Today we took a vacation from our vacation in another slice of heaven - the tiny town of Hallstatt (HAHL-shtaht), Austria. Hallstatt is located on one of the most beautiful lakes we have ever seen about two hours from Salzburg.
A very small, picturesque village, Hallstatt subtly invites you to do one of two things: stroll around and see the sights, or relax and soak in the views. We decided to do a little of both.
We started out with a walk up and down the two main streets in town then sipped a local beer in a lakeside biergarten next to our hotel while gazing at the water and surrounding mountains. Continuing our walk, we enjoyed a tasty pastry from a bakery before joining most of our group members on a hike.
We took a funicular (a word and mode of transportation I'd never heard of until this trip) up the mountain and hiked back down. It was an easy and pretty downhill hike. Some of our group members decided to tour the salt mine first, supposedly the oldest in the world, then hike down. Salt mines are what actually attracted settlers to this area in the first place, centuries before Christ was born. We passed several salt mine tunnel openings (now closed and locked) on the trail.
The hike ended in the Catholic graveyard near the Bone Chapel. Because the town is so small, it is situated on a sliver of land between a mountain and a lake, the citizens ran out of room to bury people. So they started burying whole families in graves, on top of each other. And when they ran out of room again, they started removing people/bones from the graves after they'd been buried for twelve years. Many of the bones and skulls ended up in the chapel after being lovingly named, dated, and decorated with paint by their descendants. There are currently around 600 skulls in the chapel. Since cremation is now acceptable in the Catholic church, the citizens no longer dig up the bones and paint the skulls.
We went inside for a look and they were actually quite beautiful, and it was obvious the painters spent a lot of time respectfully decorating the skulls of their ancestors. (I am not including pictures of the skulls out of respect for the deceased.)
When we arrived in Hallstatt in the morning and throughout the day the water was, in water-skiing terms - glass. If the water wasn't so cold and we had a ski boat - we'd be tempted to get out there and ski. Except water skiing is probably not allowed on this lake - they only allow electric motorboats, and very slow ones, at that. So we rented one of those for an hour and took two of our travel buddies with us for a ride around the lake.
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We spent the rest of the afternoon on the deck outside our hotel room, gazing at this...
...and this...
...and this...
...and this...
...a perfect ending for another perfect day on this tour.
Hallstatt is a place to go to dream, honeymoon, write a book, convalesce, or spend the end of your days. Thank you, Rick Steves, for introducing us to this wonderful place. YOLO!!