On the road through Austria

This was the longer of the two slides. I took this picture as we were about 1/4 the way down. We were travelling at 20 mph (as they take a picture of you and put the speed on it).

Here is everyone sitting very close to each other on the "train"

Karen and I in our mining outfits, although some of the pictures made us look like Klan members.

Here is a picture of the healthy lunch stop we made.

This is a picture of Linderhof castle and the surrounding grounds. This is from one side (yes, another long walk to this point).

This is the castle from the other side, the small building at the furthest point in the picture is where I took picture 1 from. Lots of walking, but have to work off the food we have been eating somehow.

Well I have finally found some internet connection (sitting in the Arena in Prague) so it is time for some catching up.

We left Oberammergau fairly early on Sunday morning, which was okay, as just about everything is closed on Sunday anyway. We travelled for about 2 hours before stopping for a quick tour of Linderhof Castle. This castle was much smaller, but the lands around it were very nice. We didn't actually go inside this one, but spent about an hour walking through the grounds. Then it was back on the bus for another 2 hours when we stopped for lunch, we had the choice of McDonalds or Burger King , nice picks for training athletes, but ah well, with the amount of fried pork and bread everyone has been eating there is no turning back now. I figure the only way the Bavarian people aren't all 400 lbs is the amount of walking and bike riding that everyone does. Either that or the smoking keeps them thin. Apparently the hazards of smoking haven't been communicated to the Europeans, it is like I am travelling back to the 80's everywhere we go. Cigarette machines on the street, and smoking in every restaurant and hotel. You forget how bad it is until you are back in a cloud of smoke. We were then back on the bus for another 2 hours to get to Hallen Austria. Here we went for a trip into the salt mines (how Salzburg got it's name, as it was the money from the salt in the 7th century that brought most of the wealth to this area) deep in the mountain. We had to enter using the traditional method, which was a train (really it was a bench on wheels), and then to go down we took a slide (first a 27m, then a 42m slide). We were also in traditional mining outfits. It was quite interesting, although not for those who are claustrophobic.

After this we were off to our hotel in Hallen. A small place, but it was a place to sleep, and we were off early the next morning anyway.