Hotel Minotel Kirchenwirt Schladming

After 2 days of biking mayhem, hiking down the Planai mountain watching practice and qualifying, it was finals day. Unfortunately we broke our camera trying to take a timed picture on top of the mountain. We rested it on a rail, i pressed the button and ran to where Clare was standing only to find when turning round the camera was not there anymore.... It had fell off and broke ...

... room.... but it got the thumbs up as it was clean, tidy and modern. The view from the room was amazing, perfect view of the Planai mountain slope, so good we could have sat there and watched the biking from our room!! Dropped our bags and went for our first meal out since leaving home, chilli fahitas and chicken burgers went down a treat, god bless Papa Joes!!!!

... parts out (head and leg bones). They wash and bleach them, then paint the skulls as a way to show respect and stack them all together in this building. The building is basically full and the last one was added in 1984 I think. It is a very important place to the community and it was a huge honor to get buried in there. As my dad would say, "People are dying to get in there"!

After that we went on a long hike up to a lookout and the salt mine. Really nice ...

... going on in the old town and I could hear it pretty well while I had my window open. It was loud enough that it was distracting me while I was reading. So I had to close the window. It was actually fairly cold outside, though, so it didn’t make it too warm inside.

For some reason the power went out in my room about 8 pm. So before I went to bed, I had to use my watch light to find my way to the bathroom at the end of the hall ...

... 8217;re always around people, who are strangers, whether it be in your room, at breakfast, or just hanging out in a common room. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if I was travelling with someone else, but being on my own it gets hard to tolerate.

So I ended up not leaving my room for the rest of the night. I read my book some more, actually took a nap, and then read a lot more (it was a really good book). I thought about going out to dinner, which is ...

... black striped socks up to my knees
to protect me...oh and my handbag! Yes, I know I'm so cool..... It was
a nice walk tho and we even got to build some cairns (rock
formations)... with 100s ofothers in the river. We spent the afternoon
sunbaking - again. And ate Pasta for dinner, again.... at this rate im
going to get fat.

... were all in the water in a matter of seconds, jumping off the stone wall’s diving board (literally, a board, no spring at all) into the lake. First experience with others dressing and undressing in the middle of the park (going "full Euro," as we call it). The water is glorious. Walked to town for dinner, then did the after dinner tour. Saw an oompah band in the square, had the mandatory eis, and called it a day with the stroll back to the camping.

It rained heavily all night (quite unusual for Hallstatt, I'm told.) Our plan for today: visit the Ice Caves at Dachstein and head for Hungary for our visit with Attila's family.

To reach the Ice Caves, we took a gondola (our third in as many days) to the top of the mountain. For there we hiked 20 minutes up the mountain to the caves. On our way up the gondola, Attila made friends with a ...

... degrees. It was pretty good, but no pictures allowed inside. We reached Schladming on the Friday afternoon, pitched our tent, then walked down to the action - only there wasn't any. It was the break between the 4 cross qualifying and the finals. So we looked around for a while, checked out a few of the team tents, then went back to our campground. We headed back to watch the finals at 7pm, under lights. (For those of you non-bikies at home, 4 cross is like a mix ...

... town (well, one of us did), climbed up a very steep hill to the castle (the funicular was too expensive), didn't go in to the castle (surprise, surprise, NOT, it was too expensive ... and we were a little castle'd out after Germany) and went for a long (free) walk down the other side into an area where next to no tourists visit. It was just a residential area but it was nice to see that not all of Salzburg has been ruined by the masses of tourists! On to Vienna next ...