Well, I went deep underground a couple times today, was hoping to do another, but some of the caves aren’t open for long. It started with a trip to near the top of the mountain above Hallstatt, to the Salz Welten (Salt World) Salzbergwerk (Salt Mine) The world’s oldest salt mine, though it is no longer actively mined from. It’s been mined for thousands of years back from the stone age. At least photographs were allowed in here. Annoyingly you don’t learn tons about the mine, they kind of wanted to focus more on fancy laser light shows and stuff which wasn’t particularly interesting. But it was still cool. And of course no trip to a salt mine is complete without a visit to the salt gift shop. SO MUCH SALT!

After that came a bus ride to the other side of the lake to the town of Obertraun to take a cable car very very high up a mountain to go in to the Giant Ice Caves. It’s an exhausting steep walk up a hill to a cave deep into the mountain, where ancient bear bones were found. And ice. Lots of ice. You go deep into stony caves which look really cool, and a ways in you walk along platforms over huge ice formations. Neat! Also, not really a whole lot is learned about the cave, and there is several pointless light shows. But at the end there is a cool suspension bridge of a big glacier, with lots of color lights flashing around and Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor playing loud – (The typical haunted house music. At least now you know what that song is called!) It was still just a really cool sight to behold. One part near the beginning you go stand in a large rock room and just stare into a huge black abyss that you slowly work your way into down a path. Definitely a sight worth seeing! Just a few minutes away is also the Mammoth caves, another huge cave network, but with no ice. Sadly I didn’t have time for this one, as they stop tours of it at 2:30 in the afternoon! Funnily enough the day was hot. Who’d have thought you’d be warm at the top of a mountain in the middle of October in Austria in shorts and a shirt! The ice cave was very cold inside!

So afterwards I spent some time wandering around the top of the mountain – there is another cable car that takes you far all the way to the very top that gives an incredible view from all the lands around, but it was already getting a bit late and I wouldn’t have much time to do anything up there. There’s a bunch of other events and activities up there, doing all that + both caves is definitely an all-day thing.

After getting back into Hallstatt, I figured I’d go for a swim on a boat, minus the swimming part though, so I just went to a little boat rental place and went for a nice boat ride on the lake all by me onesie.

Images here!