Today largely felt like a bonus touring day. When last I had internet access (Friday), the forecast was calling for a good chance of rain all day today. Happily, while it was cloudy enough to shroud the mountains for much of the day, we avoided any rain — the only rain we had all day was while we were in a museum, so it all worked out fine.

We started the day having breakfast on the patio out back of our B and B, where we met a man from the Czech Republic and his young daughter (who was too shy to speak). We chatted over breakfast, and he had even been in Ohio back in the 90s to see an old girlfriend. After he excused himself from breakfast, he came back a few minutes later and gave both of us each a can of Czech beer, which he insisted had to be served very cold. It was such a friendly and generous gesture that we thanked him profusely, even though we do not drink beer. I’d love to bring it home for my friends who do like an occasional beer, but it is in a can, and I am afraid to bring it on the plane in my bags for fear it will burst. Perhaps we can give it to our B and B hostess.

We got in the car and drove a few miles to a nearby cable car at the foot of Dachstein Mountain. There are actually two cable cars up the mountain, and we took the first one up to about 4,000 feet. We were going to try to catch the second one up to 6,000 feet if the weather cleared up. At the top of the lower one, the weather was clear enough to see back to Hallstatt. The views were very fine, but we were there to tour two caves — Ice Cave and Mammoth Cave.

We started with Ice Cave, where we had a twenty-minute wait after our energetic hike up to the mouth of the cave. We were in a multi-lingual party of about twenty-five people, but there were options for all of us — either a downloaded app for your smart phone or a printed information card in various languages, and the guide spoke in both German and English.

The tour of the cave was about a half-mile long, with a fairly major elevation change over five hundred steps; the exit was a separate place from the entrance and was quite a bit higher up the mountain. The first third of the tour gently went down, and all of that part of the cave was ice-free, with a temperature of about 35 degrees. We then went through a door and the temperature dropped. I had always thought that all caves had the same constant temperature, but I was wrong. This cave is such that cold air in the winter cools the cave, but then in the summer does not heat it so much. At any rate, it hovers right below 32 degrees all year round, and so most of the water that finds its way into the cave freezes. The summer water, which is warm, melts the ice some, but the winter gains outpace the summer losses, so the ice accumulates about 1/3 to 1/2 an inch per year.

It was very impressive. I like caves anyway, and this one was full of ice, which I had never seen in a cave before. The ice piled up to make interesting formations or to look like flowing frozen water. We got splashed a lot from the drops of water coming from overhead, but it was well worth it. Two highlights from the cave were a large ice pillar almost thirty feet tall and a huge room full of ice that was over sixty feet deep (which you could see the profile of when you left that room). It was all very beautiful, and it meant that we had gone from Salzburg being over 90 degrees two days ago to being in this cave where it was about 30 degrees.

We got out of the ice cave and checked the time. We had a group tour of the other cave at 12:55, and it looked as if we only had about twenty minutes to get there. Mer and I went along without stopping and got to the other cave door right at five of. The door was closed, and there was no one there. We sat down in the beautiful spot and waited. After a few minutes, a couple came around the corner and joined us, but still no guide. Then the couple got up and left. Still no guide. We got restless. It had now been fifteen minutes. A few people showed up, but still no guide. We decided after twenty minutes to give up, but as we got to the corner, I looked back and saw the guide coming out of the cave. We hurried back, but he had disappeared. We could not find him, so we gave up again, and as we got to the first corner and were talking about how to get a refund, I mentioned to Meredith that we had been waiting over a half hour to 12:30. Then it hit Mer — our time was for 12:55. We had gotten to the door at 11:55. Ooopps.

So, happily, we made the tour. The Mammoth Cave is so named because it is huge and not because any bones were found in it. They know of over forty miles of cave system in Mammoth Cave and they are still exploring parts of it. The tour we were taking was again about a half-mile, or, as our guide put it, one percent of the system.

While lacking in ice since the cave stayed at about 35 or 36 degrees, it was still impressive. The first part of the tour featured colossal rooms. The second part of the tour was through steep and narrow passages, and included a room where lime and iron had leeched through to the walls and ceilings and created these amazing patterns. It was worth the little mix-up we had.

We came out of the cave and went back to the cable car center. We tried to buy tickets to the next level, but the kind man told us it would not be worth it, as the peak was fogged in. Mer was disappointed. I was sad for her, but not too upset for me, as the peak features the “Five Fingers” — five metal walkways that extend over the side of the mountain for a sheer view of (and drop to) the valley below. I’m fairly confident I would have been terrified.

We went back into Hallstatt, and after a quick snack in our B and B room, we went into Hallstatt to go and tour the Hallstatt museum. This is where we were when a thunderstorm rolled through, so we stayed quite dry. The museum, in addition to its noteworthy waterproofness, laid out the history of Hallstatt and its important salt trade, dating back to at least 5,000 BC. You can see the museum in less than two hours, and it is laid out very logically, with displays in both German and English.

After supper, we wandered the town according to our Rick Steves guide book “recommended walk.” It took us up to a waterfall we had heard but not seen, and through a very narrow lane that used to be the town’s main street up above the current one. That wrapped up our last day of being in Hallstatt before we head out to the town of Melk tomorrow.