Last night we got a new addition to the room, and she snored so loud that I’d thought my earplugs had fallen out.  Thankfully I was tired enough fom hiking ~20km that day where it didn’t really bother me as much as it could have, but I still woke up around 9AM pretty tired.  I packed up all my stuff, checked out of the hostel, then headed down to the train station to meet Ryan after he did a short bike tour of Salzburg before heading down to Hallstatt.

After getting some snacks at the train station grocery store, we caught a 12:15 train to Hallstatt and transferred once at Attnang-Puchheim.  We arrived in Hallstatt around 2:30, and had roughly two hours to spend there before we’d need to head back so I could catch a train to Vienna and not check into my hostel ridiculously late.  We took a ferry from the train station over to the old town and it had very nice views.

We decided to go on a hike up towards the salt mine, but it started to rain pretty substantially so after we got to a nice vista point we turned around and went back down into the town.

We got some gelato at a place down by the main square and tried to wait out the rain, but the drops just kept getting bigger and bigger.  We saw a bit of a chorale performance from a college university in Iowa in one of the main churches, then headed back towards the ferry stop.

I wish we were able to spend more time at Hallstatt, but if I didn’t go on a day where I otherwise would’ve needed my Eurail pass it would’ve cost 50€ to just get there and back.  Four hours of train travel and only two hours of sightseeing wasn’t exactly optimal, but I still enjoyed my time there and would like to go back some day to have a more thorough experience.

I’ve been doing really well money wise and have spent just around 15€ a day on food now that I’ve been buying more foods at grocery stores and preparing dinners at the hostel kitchen.  Combined with a generous infusion from my grandparents, I will be able to do more things during my last week in Europe.

I’m currently on a train to Vienna and will arrive around 11:30pm.  Thankfully the hostel is only about 500 meters away from the train station, so I won’t need to worry about getting lost at night.  Aiden sent me half a dozen messages earlier in the day expecting me to get to Vienna a lot sooner and wants to have breakfast together since we are apparently staying at the same hostel?  Is running into each other three separate times in three different countries still a coincidence at this point?  I don’t know.