What to Do if You Only Have a Day in Hallstatt.

I need to write about this urgently because very soon I will be going on another trip to Austria and Hallstatt is not part of the winter itinerary. Plus I would be writing so much about travel experience that this might just keep getting pushed aside.

For this blog entry, I will sort of mesh my travel experience with information about the place, and small tips on where to eat and how to plan a perfect trip. 

So what do you do if one only has one day to visit Hallstatt?  

The tip is always to arrive there early. Hallstatt is around 1.5 hours away from Salzburg, and best time to visit is early morning when there are fewer tourists. To any tourist, the biggest drawback of a place of interest is always too many "other tourists". Hallstatt is a tiny place so very soon it will be overwhelmed, it's easy to get crowded there. So if you want to see some local folks going about their daily chores (some wearing traditional Dirndl/Lederhosen), arrive there early! 

I took a connecting bus from Salzburg HauptBahnhof to Bad Ischl, a small town between Salzburg and a cluster of other touristy villages. From Bad Ishl I took another bus which takes people to Hallstatt in two stretches. The scenery along the way is simply amazing. I saw many many guesthouses dotting the vast grass plains on the sides of the road, many of them adorned with colorful flowers. The advantage of taking train on the other hand, is that the last stretch of journey will be a ferry ride which takes people from Hallstatt train station to the town itself. So you get a stunning view of Hallstatt from its lake. Obviously I did not try this, and most other tourists appeared to have taken bus as well. In any case one can always hire a boat along the banks at 8 or 9 Euros per hour. 

the scenery is much nicer than this, but unfortunately I didn't take any except for this one which was us overlooking the Hallstatt lake.

Hallstatt is a tiny town, so one day really is enough. But you need to plan your day well. Once you reach, take a snapshot of the bus schedule posted on a little stand at the coach bay. Keep in mind the timings of the next buses so you can plan your trip accordingly. This is because there are some attractions you might want to visit that are located else where, and buses run at an interval of 1 hour or longer, so you don't want to miss it. For example, the famous Dachstein Ice Cave is only a 10-min-ride from Hallstatt, and last entry is at 4pm something. It's also a good idea to check up on the opening times of all attractions to help planning your trip. I missed the salt mine because I didn't plan my trip properly and couldn't make it to the last admission time. 

Besides these two places, there's also six or seven other small "attractions" to seek out. The more prominent ones include a Kirche (Church) wedged half way up the Hallstatt hill, and its little museum. The rest are drop-by places that you can just hang around and move on. Once you arrive, go to the visitor center and grab a town map with all places mapped out for you, including WIFI and toilets. 

Other than sight-seeing, some of the things you can do is:

(1) Send a postcard! There's no lack of souvenir stores and you can find a nice little postcard very easily. The post office is on your left if you walk from the coach bay towards market square. 

(2) Buy a scoop or two of ice cream! there's a nice little ice cream shop on the right side of the same road leading into town. When I was there they sell one scoop at 1 Euro. Freaking cheap and delicious ice cream. Texture was almost like gelato- elastic and slow to melt. 

(3) Visit the second hand shop and buy a thing or two! As I said there are many souvenir shops along the main road but those are exorbitant. If you just turn right into a shabby looking lane, you will find a garage-like shelter on your right, there you can pick up any thing from old book to rusty oil lamps. I picked up two Donald Duck cartoon books, in Deutsch, yes, in German to practice my tongue. 

(4) Walk all the way inwards till the end of the town. The layout of the town is elongated, like a banana curving around the hill. Many tourists hang around the first half of the town and their seldom venture beyond church and market square. But that's actually where you can get a different view of Hallstatt and its symbolic clock tower, which can only be seen from the coach bay or a boat on the lake. 

This is important as my favorite travel picture of all times was taken from that spot. There is a reward to walk a little more beyond the norm, folks!

Keep walking, all the way in and turn around and look back, Hallstatt's little surprise! 

This is less flattering, not only because of lack of filter but also at this angle, the clock tower can be seen, but is too far away to make a good shot!

(5) Just watch the local life go by.
Besides tourists there's not many people to watch. There were some people who appeared to be Austrians, at least they spoke Deutsch, but I was not sure if they are residents of Hallstatt. I was fortunate enough to see two local chefs roasting a pig. Having tried Schweinhaxe myself, I know how tasty that roasted pig must be. So I sat there watching them go about their business while munching on a kebab.

By the way, Schweinhaxe is pig's throttle, a typical Bayern delicacy:)