Hallstatt, Austria: Playing on the mountaintop

The sight of Hallstatt in the distance literally takes your breath away. It sits right on the edge of a lake, nestled up against the mountains in a green valley of the Alps. As a quaint little authentic Austrian village in such a beautiful setting, Hallstatt is picture-perfect from every angle. So perfect, in fact, that it's hard to believe it's actually real. We kept pinching ourselves during the entire ferry ride across the lake.

When we arrived, the ferry operator kindly locked our luggage up in the boat house--leaving us free to explore all day! Rather than begin our visit with a romantic stroll through the village, we decided to hit up the famous salt mines first and see if the weather would clear up a bit later.

Forty-four Euro later, we were on the cable car heading to the mines high up the mountain. We found a little picnic table with an amazing view of the valley, whipped out the last bit of our PB&J (that we'd brought from Delaware to ensure a few cheap meals), and enjoyed our lunch!

We then went on our little nature walk in the Alps to get to the mines. Along the way, we saw a herd of sheep, beautiful flowers, and a statue of Saint Barbara (see, Mom? You really are a saint!).

Once we arrived, they hooked us up with some extremely flattering jump suits and the tour guide lead us to the tunnel.

Although I'm sure the tour was very educational, Matt and I made our own fun by concocting "scary" stories about the mines as we walked through the narrow and dimly-lit tunnels and shafts. The fateful, ridiculously detailed story we came up with about Hans, his runaway mine cart, and his distraught girlfriend that haunt the mines still makes me laugh.

And our favorite part of the tour? You know, the reason we dropped a whopping $65 on the excursion? The long wooden slides down the mines (there were multiple) and cute little train ride back up. Yep, we are that easily entertained. They should consider selling tickets for just those parts. Seriously.

We walked out of the mines and into gorgeous sunshine. Our plan worked! Just when you thought Hallstatt couldn't be any more beautiful, the sun danced across the valley and lit up the village. So we took a few more pictures from the mountain, rode the cable car back down to the town, and then commenced our romantic stroll through the tiny streets along the lakeside.

But this post is already too long so that part will just have to wait :-)