Saturday, July 9, 2016

Europe 2016: Day 12...All Around Hallstatt...

We had a few different hikes in mind for our day on Tuesday, knowing that we needed to get away from the village of Hallstatt.  We had a fairly bad experience at breakfast with other guests staying at the hotel and we knew we would be in for a long day if we did not venture out.  Ultimately, we decided to ride the ferry across the lake to Obertraun so we could rent bikes for the day!

We rode the ferry and walked the 20-30 minutes to Obertraun.  As soon as we saw Obertraun, we knew that was where we should have stayed!  We really liked Hallstatt, BUT it was quite crowded.  I will elaborate more later.

Hallstatt from across the lake


We arrived in Obertraun and really liked the vibe the village had.  We rented our bikes and were on our way!  We were not entirely sure how far we were going to ride, so we paid for a half a day which required us to be back by 1:00 pm.  The lady that rented us the bikes, told us if we wanted to stay out longer, we could and that we could settle up on any overage later.  She told us she wanted us to enjoy the beautiful day and sunshine.

Our bikes and Hallstatt

Ken also bought a Stiegl Radler to enjoy during our ride.  I loved drinking the Stiegl Radlers so much that we have found them at one liquor store here at home to enjoy.

We rode our bikes along the path that went along Lake Hallstatt

We had originally thought that we would ride to Steeg and turn around, but we ended up riding all the way to Bad Goisern, a village North of Lake Hallstatt.  We left Bad Goisern and rode back to Steeg to stop for a drink.

Enjoying the sunshine and warm weather


On our ride out, we had noticed a little restaurant along the lake and made a mental note of it for the ride back.  We stopped and had a little lunch and enjoyed the scenery.

The pefect lunch view

We arrived back to Obertraun at 2:00.  We were fully prepared to pay for the extra hour of use of our bikes, but the girl at the front desk was not going to charge us.  The keeper of the bikes, Fritz, had a different idea and was yelling at the girl saying that we were late, in German of course.  She told us what he said and still said she was not making us pay.  Ken told her to tell Fritz that the handle bars on his bike were messed up and he really paid for a working bike.  It was a pretty fun situation.  Ironically enough, it really set the tone of many of our dealings for the remainder of our time in Austria, by Austrian men.

We bought a few Radlers and enjoyed them along the lake before we figured out what we were going to do for the rest of the day.

We heart Radlers!

Enjoying the view 

We decided that we would walk to the cable car to take us up to the Five Fingers viewing area and go up for the view and walk around a bit.  On the far end of Obertraun, we saw an restaurant and decided to stop for ice cream.  It was pretty hot out so an ice cream break was important.

This was one of the best ice cream sundaes I have ever had.

Everyone loves Stiegl!


A view of the valley

Some of the beautiful scenery we saw along the way.

Once we made it to the cable cars, we learned that the last cable car would come down at 5:00 pm.  It was 4:00 pm at the time, so it would only give us about 30 minutes to wander around on the mountain.  We decided to skip it since it was not a lot of time to enjoy the view.  We walked back to Hallstatt since the bus was not going to run for another hour or so.  Ken was not exactly thrilled with all of the walking we did that day after riding our bikes 20 miles!  Between all of our walking and biking riding, there was only one small section of the lake that we did not see.  I thought it was pretty funny because we were planning on a lighter day, ha, ha!


After our long day of bike riding and walking all around the lake, we decided we would get pizza to go and enjoy it on our balcony.  We love pizza and wine nights at home, so this was such a great thing for us to do!

Pizza and wine in Hallstatt on our last night.  It was amazing.


A fun day exploring Lake Hallstatt!


Up next, we travel to Vienna Austria!

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