We all resisted. I finally got up at 7:20am. On the advice of the lady who rents the apartment, we wanted to get one of the first tours of the ice cave to beat all the crowds. Apparently the cave is especially busy on bad weather days!
We had a quick breakfast, then drove up the mountain to the parking lot. Then we had to walk 15 minutes to the cable car. At the lower cable car, we were at 1,850 meters. The cable cars were pretty small, only holding about 15 people at a time. It was definitely the steepest cable car line I’ve ever been on in my life! At the top of that, we then walked another 20 minutes higher up the mountain to reach the ice cave.
The cave is called Eisriesenwelt (Ice Giant World). It is the largest ice cave in the world. The tour was a 1km walk into the cave. The entire cave system in 42km long. The size of the caverns was really impressive and the ice formations were very beautiful. It was definitely a new twist to cave sightseeing. Yet, the caves in the karst region of Slovenia are still the most impressive caves I’ve seen in my life.
One neat aspect about the cave is that there is no internal lighting system. Instead, every four people were given a Davy lamp to carry. It was pretty neat only having firelight to see by. The total combined light was actually very bright. The bad aspect about the tour, was that it involved climbing up 750 more steps, after we had already climbed quite a ways up the mountain.
When we finished our ice cave tour, we made our way back down the mountain to our apartment in Werfen. There we had a lunch of sandwiches. I caught up on my backlog of postcards. I wrote 7! Five for Scott, and two for mom. I had a bunch I had purchased in England that I finally used! Lol.
Then Dad decided to take a nap. The rest of us went out to visit the local castle, Castle Hohenwerfen. We had to walk up a hill to reach that too!! There was a falconry bird show going on when we arrived. The show wasn’t all that interesting, but the eagles were very beautiful.
The most impressive part of the castle was the torture room and dungeon. They had a tower with a hole in the floor through which they lowered prisoners into the dark, dank prison. God what a horrible place!! We also were able to climb to the clock tower and had great views of the Alps and surrounding valleys. Beautiful!
We made it back to the apartment around 5:30pm. Dad hadn’t started making the fajitas for dinner yet. He sent Baerbel and me out to buy some groceries before the stores closed at 6pm. I bought raspberry jam and a giant chocolate bar!! Baerbel went to the butcher to buy meat and cheese for sandwiches tomorrow.
Meanwhile, Davin and Jonathan walked to the local park to use the zipline, but they found it was too popular so they didn’t get to ride on it. Too bad. Baerbel and I got back to the apartment while they were out, and with Dad we had the first serving of fajitas. When we finished, the boys had the second serving of fajitas.
In the evening, four of us took baths. While I was in the bath, the other four played Volle Lotte. I then wrote one update. Jonathan then taught me how to solve a rubicks cube. I never thought I would learn how to do that! Then we went to bed around 11:30pm.
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