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| Erin's Journal for 10-03-02 Monday we wanted to see more of the gorgeous countryside around Salzburg, so we took the bus out to St. Gilgen, a small town on the lake Wofgangsee. The countryside was just beautiful out here, with rolling hills of green grass, pine trees interspersed with deciduous trees of many varieties in fall colors, and neat farmhouses and chateaus every so often. Each little town we passed looked like a romantic little place to stop, and there were plenty of pensiones and b&b's to try on a future trip! If we only had a car! (oh, and tons of money!!!) Around 11am we reached St. Gilgen, a lovely town at the end of the lake where we would catch a ferry up the lake to St. Wolfgang. On the way to the dock, we found a grocery store and picked up snacks, which we munched as we waited for the ferry to arrive. By the time we got to St. Wolfgang, we found that the famous old-style train which makes trips to the top of the mountain was on its last official journey up, which would only give us 3 minutes to look around up there before starting back down! The hike back down the mountain was listed at about 2 1/2 hours, which wouldn't get us back to the dock in time to catch the last ferry back to St. Gilgen, which if we missed that would also cause us to miss the last bus back to Salzburg!!! So we decided we'd better not take the train up, and hiked up the trail of the mountain for about an hour hoping for some better views than the relatively good ones from the waterfront. This was a bigger deal than it should have been, because I'd grown impatient disembarking from the boat behind a really slow old lady and had decided to hop off the side of the ramp. In the process I banged my knee really hard, and was limping a little. But the uphill climb seemed to do it good, keeping it from swelling and freezing up, so when we stopped about an hour up the mountain I was doing fine. We decided to stop at this point because there was a bench on the side of the trail and a pretty view of the mountains & lake, so we stopped and read and soaked in the sunshine for about 45 minutes there before heading back to town. Once in St. Wolfgang once more, we had a half hour before our ferry and trekked the 10 minutes in between St. Wolfgang and the next town for a change of scenery. We met the ferry boat back, made our bus, and were back in Salzburg by 7pm. We stopped in to an internet cafe finally, checked some emails and sent a few, then went to the hostel for dinner again. I wasn't that hungry, so I ate a little before we headed up to bed early. We talked for a while, then chatted with our roommates from New Zealand when they came up. Then we went to bed early, as we knew we'd be leaving early in the morning. |
| The views of the Alps from St. Wolfgang were stunning |