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AUSTRIA - DAY 4
After breakfast we headed into the city to wander around. This proved to be more challenging than we thought. We caught a bus from the stop outside the hotel and ended up . . . who knows where. The bus driver kindly helped us out so we caught the next bus from there and we ended up at the train station. A third bus later and we eventually got where we wanted to be in the first place. This is the first city we have had trouble understanding the public transport system.
We wandered down narrow streets and entered an amazing plaza with this massive fountain in the middle. Then just a hop skip and jump away in the next plaza was another massive fountain and still further away another. It's like every 500 metres is another fountain. Even the weather station we found was elaborate. It showed us that it was only 8 degrees today, with a chilly wind thrown in for good measure.
We continued heading towards St Peters Church and the Catacombs. Before we got there we saw this giant gold ball so Pasqual, Captain Australia and the girls tried to hold it up. We were not sure what the importance of the giant ball was or why there was a single man standing on the top but it was an impressive monument / statue.
We arrived in the catacombs of St Peter's graveyard. The origins of St. Peter's Graveyard, the oldest Christian burial place in Salzburg, goes back to the late Roman city of Luvavum; it was founded here a few years after Christ's crucifixion. The oldest visible part of the graveyard were the catacombs hewn into the cliff face of the Monchsberg.
After leaving the catacombs we walked slowly back towards the river for the excursion we were going on. It was then that we discovered that Captain Australia was missing. Being great detectives we re-traced our steps, but with every minute our prayers of getting Captain Australia back were diminishing.
Captain Australia meanwhile, must have decided that he wanted to explore a bit on his own because he abandoned ship and disappeared. Some kindly old lady found him and handed him in at the catacombs where he sat imprisoned until we, using our powers of deduction found and freed him. Through consensus of the group it has been decided that Pasqual will not look after Captain Australia again.
We boarded our bus heading to Berchtesgaden Salt Mines for our adventure into the mountain of salt. This 500 year old salt mine, still extracting salt today, has been opened to the public for a very long time. We donned our mining outfits of blue overalls with reflective strips (Pasqual thought he would never wear reflective clothing again) and climbed aboard the train that would take us deep into the mountain.
We whizzed though the pitch black narrow tunnels until we arrived at our final destination: the upper level of an immense stone hall. The "Salt Cathedral" that opens in the midst of the mountain is 17 metres high and has a ceiling space of more than 3000 square metres. Originally this was a sink works where salt was extracted from the rock using water.
To get to the lower level of the Salt Cathedral we had to slide down a 34 metre wooden miner's slide and we immediately found out why the overalls were necessary as our bottoms became quite warm towards the end of the slide.
We walked through tunnel after tunnel marveling at the different elements of the salt mine. One such element was a Rock Salt Grotto dedicated to the Bavarian 'fairytale king' Ludwig II. Some of the translucent salt rocks were lit so it added to the atmosphere.
We slide down another wooden slide taking us to a lower level in the mountain. It was then onto a boat floating on a brine lake. We slowly travelled across it watching a magical light and sound show. It was awesome. The train then took us back to the point of departure where we removed our overalls and headed back on the bus to Salzburg. Along the way we spotted "Eagles Nest", Adolf Hitler's vacation house on top of Kehlstein Mountain.
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