Hallstatt 5 September 2017

I know I say this every day but it is what we do, up early brekky and out the hotel by 7.30 for our 8.01am train from Bolzano to Brenner (the Brenner Pass) border of Italy/Austria, we arrived at 9.22am for our train to Innsbruck.  Our conductor was a lovely girl when we were alighting at Brenner she told us our next train was the same platform as we only had 11minutes.  There were lots of us on this trip. These were all Regional trains today but all lovely on time, delightful staff, very impressed.  The scenery on these two journeys was outstanding we were blown away by the absolute beauty of it all.  Into Innsbruck at 10.13am we had one hour this time so a trip to the loo a coffee and onto the platform to catch at 11.14 Innsbruck to Attnang-Puchheim this was Railjet this time (not booked) what a beautiful train they do know how to do this.  More astounding scenery no dropping off to sleep on these journeys. There is a screen on board letting you know what platform you will come into and a list of  connecting trains and platforms so you just go straight to it, only 11 minutes again, great stations, lifts, escalators etc. really makes the difference between it being a day and a great day.  Our next train to Hallstatt was only 75 mins then a connecting ferry over to Hallstatt a darling little Austrian village nestled on the side of a mountain, only 800 permanent residents.  We booked into our hotel did a walk thru the town very lovely, tomorrow an easier day we will do the cable car and Sam will do the salt mine which has been here for 7,000 years. 

We heard about Hallstatt one day I wrote it on the dry cleaning docket and Sam put it into our itinerary really not knowing much other than it was beautiful.  It must also be on the radar for all Asian travel agents because we are one of the few Anglo Saxon visitors here. There was a lovely chap sitting across from us on our last train he could not get over the scenery or the rivers, I said I just love the rivers he was in delight what a lovely thing to see. 

I do know I sound painful saying how beautiful these places are but they really are there are so many tragic things in this world to see such beauty is a delight.  We are really tired tonight so a good sleep is in order.  Sabine and Sam