The weather was rainy, misty and beautiful, and we heard bells ringing across the water in the morning. Will needed to get some antibiotics for a cough so Eckbert gave us a map to the one in town. The doctor was very fast, very laid back, and the pharmacy was manned by his secretary. The doctor filled Will’s medicine from the tap in the room while talking away to Lou amongst recently taken vials of blood from previous patients. The whole service including medicine only cost €40 compared to US$160 for the “instant service” without medicine we would have been charged in the US.
We took a stroll through the local supermarket and bought some chocolate (yummy), iced tea and coffee and a few other non-essentials. We headed back into Hallstatt through the now lowered barrier and found a swarm of tourists and our parking spot was gone. I made the mistake of attempting to drive on to find one only to discover an increasingly narrow road and people who seemed oblivious to our presence. It took about 10 minutes to turn around and get back to our parking spot (which fortunately had become available) covering a whopping distance of no more than 100 m.
As Gill and Will slept, Lou and I took a walk through the township, the rain having postponed for a moment. We walked through some tiny steep paths and staircases to the local Catholic church with associated graveyard and bonehouse. A well lit tunnel-like path descended down into the township with doors to dwellings leading off it. Several bridges ran over swollen rivers as water cascaded down from the main waterfall.
We went back to our room and waiting for the sleeping babes to wake. After they arose, we headed out to explore Hallstatt some more. We went to the Museum and did the complete tour which had displays of tools and clothes dating back to 1400 BC, through the early salt mining days to modern practices. After the museum, we took Gill and Will up to the church where we went inside so Will could test the acoustics, and then out to the bonehouse full of painted skulls and other bones where people can still opt to have their remains placed to this day.
We decided to walk up the hill a bit to see the waterfall which turned out to be more of a tramp than initially bargained for but it was good exercise. Fortunately the path looped back to town so we didn’t have to go back down the zigzag stepped path that we came up. We walked along Seestrasse and found a café on the street under a large umbrella that served us Apfel Strudel and had internet access for €1 / 15 mins.
For dinner we found a place that served pizza and pommes (chips). We went to bed early as the early start and the events of the day left us exhausted.