Werfen, Austria

Breakfast at Le Crobag in the train station. The train ride was uneventful. The arrival was confusing as there was no signs directing us to where we needed to go, but we eventually found the parking lot where the shuttle to ice caves were going. So first a shuttle up to the Eisriesenwelt Ice Caves, then a long uphill walk to the ticket booth and another long uphill walk to the entrance to the ice caves. Once there, we were treated to another 1400 steps inside the ice caves (that's twice as many as we climbed while climbing up the Eiffel Tower!). It was quite challenging but I still wish I dressed warmer. My hands were freezing inside my thin gloves. It was 0 degrees inside and very dark, lit only by handheld lamps. The ice caves were cool (literally and figuratively) but it was a little disappointing to not be able to take photos, and it was so physically challenging that it was hard to focus on enjoying the scenery. We had beautiful views of Werfen and Hohenwerfen Fortress once we left. We had lunch at Dr. Oedl-haus, an alpine ski lodge with noodle soup to warm our bellies, followed by weiner schnitzel and apple strudel. We took the cable car and long downhill walk back to the shuttle bus and got dropped off in the parking lot where we began.

We had another confusing journey to Hohenwerfen Fortress. The signage is quite poor and not really tourist-friendly. We even had to walk down a two-lane highway to get to the entrance to the fortress which was kind of strange. We took the cable car up to Hohenwerfen Fortress at 2:30pm and walked around the weapons exhibit and saw a Birds of Prey show at 3:15pm. This was awesome and I am so happy we planned our visit to include this special show. The commentary was entirely in German but it was still awesome. We then took a guided tour with audio guide at 4pm throughout the Fortress. This was probably the best guided tour we went on in our entire trip. It was much more in depth and interesting than Hohensalzburg. The tour took us into many interior castle rooms, up in the bell tower and we even got to see where the birds of prey "live"!

We took the train back to Salzburg and had dinner at Augustiner Brau along with many beers. This was very much like buying food at a sporting event, where there are lots of little storefronts selling things and you can go from one to another to get exactly what you want. The beer was super fresh and served up to order. We got a little bit of everything and met a couple visiting from NYC whose itinerary was very similar to ours. We got a little too drunk after drinking 1.5 liters of beer in 2 hours!Read more