Salt and Snow!!! A hop back to Germany

Leaving Salzburg, we head off to find salt. Neither of us are sure why we’ve been recommended this, so we’re intrigued. We actually cut back into Germany for this part, as we’ve been told that this particular mine will allow Coen in (bit cruel to keep leaving him in the Moho! ;-) ), to a place called Berchtesgaden. So apparently the rock here is made up of 50% salt (in case you’re wondering why salt mines).

When our time slot is called, we don our mining suits (the kids look adorable while we look ridiculous!) and hop onto a little mining train. Not quite sure how Coen will react, we’re pleasantly surprised that he doesn’t once try to jump off the train or dive down a lift hatch. We are taken deep into the mines, with a translated tour of every step of the process, a ride down two amazing miners slides, a salt cathedral, a grotto and then a boat across a salt mine lake, seeing how the process has evolved over 500 years (from digging 6cm a day with a hand axe, to 2m or 6m nowadays (depending on whether Nic or I heard that detail correctly!). The kids make it through the whole tour unscathed (ok, Coen did try to jump off the boat!) and we are super pleased we made that stop.

Now to find some snow to dip our toes in...
We’ve been told that if we head to Saalbach/Hinterglimm and ‘just drive as far as you can up the valley’ then we will be in snow. It’s getting late and we know we need to find a stopover but we can’t resist checking it out (just in case there’s a motorhome stop that no one else in the world has found) to make sure there is definitely snow.

Yep, definitely snow, but locals confirm - definitely no where to park Moho! Head back down and find a lovely campsite, a gem in the mountains, free WiFi (blogs finally get released!), surrounded by snowy mountains and lake Waldsee - which to Amelia and Coens utter amazement is teeming with toads!! Thousands of them. This totally occupies Amelia for the two days and nights we are here, and although Coen does try to jump in the lake a few times, it’s worth it to see their faces. They see the toads spawn, dead ones, mating ones (piggy backs) - circle of life in one hit.

So next, snow day...to be continued...Read more