Day 24 - Exploring

Slept Great! Got breakfast and the lady said we coul store our bags at the B&B for the day while we were explored to city, we were very thankful for that. First we stopped off at the tourist info place and we had 30 minutes to kill before it opened so i challenged her to a chess match with those pieces that are two feet tall in the parks where everyone comes to watch, we only got one spectator, an 8 year old boy. Right as i was getting my butt kicked it hit, Allisons bladder. She RAN off to go to the bathroom which gave me time to contemplate my next 10 moves it would take to kill her. right when she came back plan "B" was in effect and i warned her too that she was toast. 15 moves later i checkmated her!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I took a picture of the defeated King for those who are curious. Tourist info just opened as i executed my last move so we were off. With info in hand we were off to an amazingly STEEP hike to the worlds first salt mine. Yeah right pay 1 buck to get to the top, i would rather sweat and smell really bad for 1 buck, plus Allison gets a kick out of hikes and great views. When we arrived it looked very touristy, bummer. The tour was awesome to say the least. we hiked way into the mountain which was a little erie for me. 5 minutes later i found out that it was an active mine which made me feel a lot better. In the mine we almost froze to death, saw how salt was extracted, slide down some fun slides, and got a good history on salt and how it is used. Has anyone ever heard of the "Hallstatt Period" which was over 1000 years? Well it originated here. On the way down we had a good time dreaming about a cottage my parents are looking into. Once down we grabbed some lunch and took it out on the lake in a motorized boat that we rented for 11 dollars. For an hour we grubbed, ate, took in the view and enjoyed eachothers company. We got back to shore and checked out some churches with bones and skulls that were taken out of the graves and painted, then placed in the church... interesting. Got our bags and took a ferry across the lake to catch our overnight train to Venice. Our train ride started at 6:30 pm and was going to end at 5:00 am the next morning wtih a 2 hour layover at 3am. Boy doesn't that sound like fun? It beats being at work though like most of you are ;)