On Wednesday we all went to Bad Durrenberg to the Salt Mines.  Sound boring?  It wasn't! The salt mine tour is lots of fun.  We took a bus from the train station and drove high into the Austrian Alps, some of the most beautiful mountains in the world.  When we got inside the entrance we were given white pants and a white shirt to put on over our clothing to keep our clothes from being damaged.  Then we were led to a little train of rails where we rode about 1/2 mile into the mine.  Once we stopped we got off the rails and walked probably another 1/4 mile to a little theatre where there was a short presentation on how the salt mines came to be.  It was originally discovered by the Celts that had settled in that area around 800 B.C.  The salt trade was very important to the area and salt was used as money for hundreds of years.  There were several levels to the mine and we got from one of the upper levels to a lower level by using a hardwood slide about 30 yards long.  It was a steep slide and lots of fun.  Then on to another video showing more of the salt story and another slide that was much longer than the first and still very fun.  After the second slide, we had to cross an underground lake on a pontoon type boat.  The darkness in the cavern was almost tangible until they turned on dimly lit colored lights.  After the boat docked we followed the tracks to another space where we saw the last of the videos describing the history and the characters important to the salt production at the mine.  During the walk through the mine, we passed the borders into Germany and then back into Austria.

 

Luckily we didn't have to climb out of the mine.  A very long escalator took us to the top, then we were back on to the little rail train and out of the mine.  We were all given minerature packages of salt that came from the mine as a souvenier.

 

Once we were out of the mine and our mine clothes, we went outside and walked up a steep road to an old church on the mountain above the mine.  The climb was very, very steep, but it was worth it.  From the walkway surrounding the church we had a fantastic view of the valley between Bad Durrenberg and Salzburg.  People live there in the little village of Bad Durrenberg, in fact there is a little Kindergarten there.

 

A little Celtic village was at the bottom of the mountain and we poked around it for awhile before catching the bus back to Hallein, our starting point. 

 

After arriving back in Hallein, we found a Chinese restaurant that had very good food so we had a great lunch and then couldn't resist stopping at a little ice cream shop on the way back to the train  It was a great day and everyone had a really good time.