Today was a typical breakfast. We had muesli with milk or yogurt, coffee tea and orange juice. We also made toast and enjoy that with a mix of butter and jam or soft cheese and meat. Since we are going to be on the road today and we had purchased a bunch of food we decide to make sandwiches so we spread our soft cheese and topped it with three different types of lunchmeat that we had purchased add in some lettuce for crunch and hit the road.

It rained just about all day, but luckily traffic wasn’t too bad in about 40 minutes later we saw all the signs for the ice cavern. Turns out that once we left the main road, it was 3 to 5 miles of uphill twisty switchbacks to get to the visitor center of the ice cavern. Much of the road was almost a single lane, so we had to be careful as we made our way up the side of the mountain. We did see a very nice castle in the fog on the way up. Luckily we had a lead car, he did real well until it pulled up behind a tour of us and we all slow down. We finally made it to the top and park the car in a parking space it was a little smaller than we would have liked, got out and headed to the visitor center.

The walk up to the visitor center was on a pretty steep hill and then there had to be at least 20 to 30 steps to get to the center itself. We got an a line for tickets for and the line took longer than we wanted so Holly and Heather decided to make a quick pitstop has a small bathrooms at the bottom of the stairs outside. So they went back out in the rain walked on the stairs and went to the ladies room. As we move forward in the wine room and I realized it was also an inside entrance to the restrooms which we pointed out to Holly and Heather when they came back after going back outside and walking back up the stairs outside in the rain.

We got our tickets and headed to the entrance of the ice caverns. So it turns out, that in order to get to the ice caverns you have to first walk up hills for about 20 minutes, in the rain. Then there is a cable car ride that goes up the really steep part of the hill and then you have to walk another 20 minutes a pill in the rain to get to the entrance to the caverns. We got to the entrance the caverns finally and not too wet since we all had raincoats and got in line for our tour.

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There were two lines, one for German tours and one for English tours, and luckily we didn’t have to wait too long until they were enough people for an English-speaking tour. We started the tour, which included about every fifth person being given an oil lamp sInce will be walking through a cave.

The tour guide informed us that we be walking up another 700 steps to get in and then having to climb down the 700 steps to get out. It addition to having your oil lamp, he also with magnesium on a regular basis since it burns very very brightly and reflex well off of all of the ice. We hiked up the 700 steps stop in on a regular basis to both catch our breath and look at the incredible eyes walls and ice formations. Unfortunately they did not allow any photography, so the only pictures we have are on our postcard. We continued the tour for the better part of an hour and really enjoyed it. There were stalagmites and stalactites and ice walls and all kinds of different formations. The ice is continuing to grow in certain places and so some of the formations look very different than it did a number of years ago. Similar to the salt mine, this tour would probably not pass OSHA standards. There were multiple places are ahead to duck my head to avoid hitting the ceiling there were a number of walkways that did not have any railings and the steps were not of the uniform size or depth. All in all it was a great tour and we had a fun time.

When we got out of the caverns, things have cleared up a little bit and we actually had some views several thousand feet down to the main roads, so we were able to take some very nice pictures even though there was still a lot of fog.

We hiked back down the mountain in the rain, picked up some postcards, hike back down the steps and down the steep hill the car, and finally relaxed and eat our sandwiches. We drove back to town and decided to visit the salt processing plant that was the second part of the tour from the day before.

Although it may not sound like an exciting tour, I think we all enjoyed it we were given English translations of what the tour guide said for each different stations and we ended up hiking down another four stories underground to actually see what the old saltworks Likelike. There were some equipment that a bit operating continuously since 1796. Some of it was amazing examples of engineering from the late 18th century. We learned a word about how to make salt, and how things were engineered before we had computers and other devices to help us design them.

We were all really tired at the end of the day, so we decided to have dinner at home. We checked our pedometers at the end of the day and we walked more than 7 miles and climbed the equivalent of more than 100 flights of stairs. We made dinner of goulash, salad, crackers and smoked salmon. After dinner we did some laundry, took it easy, and planned tomorrow’s activities in downtown Salzburg.