Today was a twofold day. We were exploring with the girls in the morning and then meeting up for some hiking in the afternoon with our friends. We had an early start due to the church bells, but the girls actually weren’t far behind with their wake-up so that was excellent.

Once we finished our run, we quickly showered and headed to the village grocery store for our day’s supplies – bread, eggs, apples and bananas. When we arrived at the grocery store, there were 7 cars outside of the place and it was only 7:30am. I figured they were giving stuff away or were having a convention in the village. Neither was true. Turns out, grocery stores are closed on Sunday so everyone is frantically buying things at 7:30am on Saturday.

We did well at the store today with our produce purchase. Andrée and I remembered to get a price label for each item we purchased so the cashier didn’t need to angrily call his coworker to get the label for us. Basically, you weigh the produce yourself and affix the barcode with the price to the two apples you’re buying. We only made that mistake once! Next up was bread. Pro tip: learn German before you travel to a tiny village in central Austria because very few people understand English. If I wasn’t an idiot with lots of questions, I could get by with grunts and pointing. Alas, I am an idiot and should’ve learned German. We wanted a loaf of Italian bread. It was located on the upper left shelf on the display. When we asked for it in English , the woman had to ask her coworker what the hell I was looking for. She then proceeded to find what she thought was the loaf of bread in the exact location I was asking. I felt awful. I’m sure the entire exchange took about 10 seconds, but I felt terrible not knowing how to ask for a loaf of bread.

Once our minor bread fiasco was sorted out and I received 8 euro in change (no bills), we were on our way back to Hallstatt for a tour of their salt mine, the oldest in the world (sounds a lot like the Greatest Cup of Coffee to me, but what do I know). It was a fun time.

You ride a funicular to the salt mine entrance. A funicular is basically an outdoor elevator/escalator that brings you up an 81 degree slope in an enclosed carriage. It’s scary (for me) because it’s traveling up several hundred vertical feet via a cable. I found my way to the back of the car and stared at the floor until the journey was finished. I only had to ride the ‘fun’icular one more time, so that was good.

The view was breathtaking … for the rest of the Brochu clan.

The salt mines were a chilly 8 degrees Celsius, but nothing the fancy outfit the tour people provided couldn’t handle. Our friend described it as something Hugh Hefner would wear for pajamas. It was very fancy.

The tour lasted about 1.5 hours and we found out how salt had been harvested from the Hallstatt mines for at least 3000 years. A staircase dating back to 1000 B.C.E. Was found in the cave and was shown in the last part of the tour.

Along the way, we rode these specially designed slides to get from one level of the cave to the next and exited the cave via a small locomotive.

The second part of our day’s trip took us to Obertraun, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We were able to see a giant ice cave and hike at the top of a glacier at 2100 meters. It just took two scary gondola rides to get there. The views were simply breathtaking and not something we will soon forget.