Joy in the Journey: The Hills Are Alive - Salzkammergut: The Austrian Lake District

By Monday morning, we were packed and ready to head to the long awaited Lake District of Austria, the Salzkammergut.

Just to get an idea of where we were headed geographically, the map above has the Lake District circled. We were about an hour and a half drive south of Salzburg. The distance was not that great, but the roads were windy and slow going quite a bit of the way!

And this is what we were headed for!! Beautiful, crystal lakes surrounded by the Alps. The beauty in this part of the world will truly take your breath away. No wonder musicians like Beathoven and others were inspired to write such magnificent music when they were surrounded by this beauty and majesty everyday.

We left Rothenburg around 10:00 a.m. and were approaching Munich around lunch time. We did not have plans to stop in the city, but at the last minute we decided to take a dive into Munich and head to the Haufbrauhaus for lunch! Thanks to good German city planning and wide, well marked roads we arrived at the city center parking with no trouble and were only two blocks away from the main sites in downtown Munich.

Jason and I went to the Haufbrauhaus with my friend Belinda in the spring of 2002 on the day we arrived in Munich. It was a unique time to share this location that has such special memories for us with our children.

Apparently, Drew was pretty excited about being there as well. Once the Oompah band started playing, Drew was up to his typical antics. Here is a quick video of his interperative dance to the music and a brief look at the joys of traveling with children!

After enjoying our sausage and sauerkraut lunch, we headed into the Marienplatz, which is the historic city square. It was bustling with people on that warm, spring day.

The children enjoyed a little street music.

Because the kids had done such a great job on the road for the last 3 days and walking around the city, we rewarded them with a few minutes of park time just before getting back into the car to head to Austria.

After a few hours in the car, this was the scene that greeted us as we approached our next destination of Obertraun, Austria.

We pulled up into the hotel parking lot around 7:00 p.m. This is a photo of the Obertraun Hof where we stayed for three nights. The couple that ran the B&B type lodging are British, which surprised me when we arrived. After speaking with them during breakfast in the mornings, we learned they had sold everything in the UK, quit their jobs and decided to run this lodging house! What an inspiration.

Did I mention that Obertraun is a tiny village? So tiny, it had one pizzeria which conveniently closed at 6:30 p.m. and a bar. So we packed back in the car and headed down the road a bit. We finally found an Italian place that was actually open, so we quickly went in before they closed for the evening.

The next morning, this was the scene we awoke to just outside our hotel! I had to walk just a few doors down to the grocery store for some snacks and drinks for the day. I thought to myself that I could get used to that view on my walk to the store pretty easily.

We left Obertraun by 9:30 headed to another small lake town called St. Gilgan, which is a little larger of a village. They had a cable car that was actually running so we made the 45 minute ride to "climb" to the top of the mountain. Now take a look at the cable car that is going to take us to the top of the mountain!

It was tiny in there! The capacity was actually 4, but I has hoping that meant adults so even though we were 5 that wasn't going to overload anything.

This is the view back down into the village.

And here is the view from the top! It felt like it took forever to get to the top.

Our first family picture in the Alps. I cannot even begin to describe the beauty, majesty and awe of nature and God's creation you sense as you look out over the landscape. I truly hope that the people who live in this part of the world can still feel this sense of awe when they look around them even though they see it everyday.

I am trying to keep myself from posting hundreds of pictures because I think they are all so beautiful.

We made it to the top of the mountain. You can see the path we walked behind me and the kids in the picture to the left and also notice Jason and the kids walking back down. Once again, child harness would have come in handy!

This photo captures the whole reason we desired to take this trip. To show our children the beauty and diversity of God's amazing creation.

We enjoyed a mid-morning snack of ice cream at the mountain top cafe and then headed back down the cable car to explore the town of St. Gilgan and find a spot for our picnic lunch. Without much trouble, we found this beautiful park. Talk about a view!

The park was filled with European vacationers enjoying the magnificent scenery along with us.

We let the children get all of their energy out at the park and then headed to the dock to feed the ducks the rest of our sandwich bread. It was fun to reminisce as Jason and I remembered standing on a dock, on this very lake nearly 9 years ago when our Sound of Music tour bus dropped us off to explore St. Gilgan for an hour. I never thought we would be able to return so soon!

Speaking of 9 years ago, Jason and I also took a photo at this exact spot, in nearly this same pose and used it for our Christmas in 2002. However, at the time we were driving a small VW Golf, and it was quite a bit easier to get myself on the roof of that small black car than our steeply inclinded van! Thankfully, there were no video cameras rolling during the set up of this photo.

Jenna and Ethan thought this little photo indulgence was pretty funny and asked to get in on the action.

Wrapping up the photo session, we hopped back in the van and headed to Hallstatt, which is a well known lake side town on the way back to our hotel. Rick Steves says it is the main one village worth stopping at, so of course, as informed tourist we had to follow his advice.

We arrived just in time to start searching for a dinner spot, and also allow a few minutes for our children's completely irreverant play on the city square monument/water fountain (see photo below).

This friendly, patient cat was sitting on the patio of our dinner restaurant. He was patient with Drew, and actually in the restaurant entry way by the time we left. Seems like he must a regular there!