Today was another day I had been looking forward to since we would be visiting the Salzbergwerk Berchtesgaden salt mine. Since the salt mine is actually in Berchtesdgaden, it was a very short drive down the mountain from the Intercontinental to get there in the morning. We actually arrived before the mine opened but were the first ones in the door at 9am. It is a bit cool in the mine, but everyone wears coveralls with long sleeves, so I was fine in a t-shirt and jeans underneath. The coveralls made us look like race car drivers! The salt mine is another place where no photos are allowed. But, kind of like a
Disneyland ride, photos are taken after boarding the ride-on train that takes you into the mine and also coming down one of the slides, and these are available for purchase in the gift shop after the tour. And, once again, the guides managed to sneak in a few photos.
The train ride is around five minutes long and takes you through a pretty narrow tunnel into the mine. Luckily, no one in our group was claustrophobic. The train ride reminded me of a Disneyland ride. The tour also involves descending into the mine by means of two wooden slides that are lots of fun. It is kind of hard to describe the slides, but you will get a better idea from the pictures. (We took a funicular at the end of the tour to get back to the surface of the mine.) The tour provides a lot of information about salt itself, as well as the mining and production of the salt from the mine, which has been in operation for over 500 years. We also saw examples of the equipment used in the mining. It was quite interesting, but I have to admit that my favorite parts of the tour were the train, the slides and rafting over the salt lake, which is part of the process of "wet mining," where fresh water is fed into the mountain, which removes the salt from the composite rock. Brine is created, which is a concentrate salt solution with 26.5% salt content. We rafted across one of these small brine lakes, which is so dense that you cant see through it at all, and the solution reflects the ceiling of the cave. It is really quite beautiful. After the tour, we had a bit of time to browse in the gift shop that sells various salt items and souvenirs.
From the salt mine, we headed to a bakery in Berchtesgaden for pretzel making. This was a fun activity, but I have to give the nod to scone making in Scotland as the more fun of the two. I think this has a lot to do with the fact that I happen to like scones a lot more than pretzels, but also because we started from scratch with the scone making, mixing up the dough before making the scones. With the pretzels, the dough was already prepared when we arrived (I assume because it needs to rise and it wouldnt be practical from a time standpoint to have adventurers make the dough and then wait around for it to be ready to make into pretzels). We had to roll the dough into long, thin tubes and then shape the tubes into pretzels. One added bonus of the pretzel making activity is that the owner of the bakery gave a tour of the bakery and provided some interesting information about how the pretzels and other baked goods are produced. This bakery supplies many of the restaurants and hotels in the area. While we waited for the pretzels to bake, there was an opportunity to purchase other items from the bakery, have a coffee etc.
Once everyone had their bag of pretzels, we were off to Mondsee to view the church used in the wedding scene in The Sound of Music, followed by lunch outside on the patio of a restaurant on Mondsee (Moon) Lake, which was a very scenic spot for lunch. Lunch was family style, and the amount of food brought out was amazing: salad, pizza, schnitzel and pasta, followed by dessert. There was a park across the street from the restaurant that had a very cool playground that we had to drag the junior adventurers (including the teens and 20-somethings) away from when it was time to depart for the drive to Vienna.
The drive to Vienna was about three hours and, once again, we stopped at one of the amazing Austrian rest stops at about the halfway point (not Rosenberger this time, though). It was close to 7pm by the time we arrived at the Ritz Carlton Vienna. Dinner was on our own, and the guides provided a few recommendations. Since lunch had been on the late side and had been supplemented by pretzels and other goodies from the bakery in Berchtesdgaden, we werent starving when we arrived at the hotel. So we walked from the Ritz about ten minutes to an area of Vienna that is a pedestrian mall with shops and restaurants. We wandered around until we got hungry and then found Vappianos, one of the restaurants recommended by the guides, which was quite good. It is Italian, featuring fresh pasta that is cooked to order while you wait. The down side is having to wait in line while pasta is made for everyone in front of you, but the plus side is how fresh and tasty the pasta is once you get it. After dinner, we walked back to the Ritz and called it a night so we would be fresh for our visit to Schonrunn Palace the next morning.