Took it easy around the house this morning. We got in around 10 last night and got to bed late so we slept in a little bit this morning. Ran a load of laundry and planned the day.

We ate an early lunch at a local pub – it was delicious! Schnitzel with pomes frites, roast pork with large dumplings, local filled dumplings over sauerkraut, cabbage salad and beef soup with pancake stripes. Everything was really, really good. Unfortunately, their idea of still water, vs seltzer water, was mineral water, but Heather was kind enough to drink it ams share her tap water. And the doors to the toilets had cute little metal tags on them.

After lunch, we drove south to see the salt mine. Unfortunately, it started to rain a little bit, but the roads were good and we didn’t get too wet walking from the car to the buildings. It was a very good idea of Heather’s to make a reservation the night before. We arrived in time for our 2 o’clock tour, But the folks buying tickets at the ticket window could not start their tour until almost 4 o’clock. The first thing we did when we arrived at the beginning of the tour was to receive our miner’s outfits. The outfits were black with white piping – they look very nice. I think they gave Harley a child’s outside, and they had to work a couple seconds longer to find the outfit orange enough for me. My outfit looks brand new, I don’t think they have many guests as tall as I am.

We join the rest of the group waiting to go on the tour with us. Of course, all the instructions were given in German. They finally got around to us and realize we spoke English and told us just to wait and we would have our turn and they will also give us audio guides for the tour. It was finally our turn to go on the tour, we walked for the double doors and climbed onto a small train where we road facing front straddling a bench. The instructions were given in German and English to keep or arms and legs inside the car and they took pictures of us and the train took off.

They weren’t kidding about keeping your arms and legs inside the train. We are moving at a pretty good clip and there was less than 6 inches clearance between the top of my head in the very narrow rock and salt tunnel that we were driving through it was also a times less than 6 inches on either side of my shoulders or on the side of my head to the rock/salt walls. It was really fun and exciting and fast. We finally reached the end of the ride and disembarked and start of the walking tour. Since everyone else spoke German, the guide explained each station in German and directed us to press a button on our audio tour device. It was very interesting. In addition to learning all about the history of the salt mine and household is extracted from the ground, there were several laser light shows and a bunch of really interesting exhibits. We also got to ride to large wooden slides from one level of the mind to another, each time sitting in a group of four as if we were on a toboggan. At the end of the tour, we road a funicular and got to go another train ride, although the channel we rode through was much wider and not as scary.

 

After the ride me made a quick run through the souvenir store and then hustle outside to go to the second part of our tour which was the salt processing plant. To our surprise the salt processing plant was about 15 miles away and the last tour there started in about 10 minutes so we went to Plan B and had ice cream and sat and relaxed. Since it was still raining in late in the afternoon we decided that rather than trying to do Sightseeing in the rain, we would go shopping for food for breakfast and dinner and look for a food market that was part of an indoor shopping mall. We found one that met our criteria and it also had an IKEA store.

We walked through the mall in the first place we stopped was at the muesli store. We are already on our second bag of muesli and Heather loves them usually so we ended up buying a special Salzburg edition mix of muesli for Heather and me to split. We then wander through the mall and grab a couple of snacks at a bakery and also leave very unique sushi shop, and finally did our food shopping and then wander through IKEA again and grabbed some dinner there.

We headed back to the Airbnb, where we put up some additional laundry and watch some silly German game show. One thing we learned while watching the Germany game show is that they don’t censor foul language on television!