A Week in Austria: Monday

Our first full day here (Monday 5 May) at the https://www.haldensee-hotel.com/ was winterly cold at a high of only 5 or 6C, and the grey sky and nearly ceaseless rain made it a perfect day for staying in our cosy room (apart from meals, of course), reading and resting.

View from our room on Monday morning

The rain let up mid-afternoon, and we quickly donned our rain-proof hiking things and warm garments and went out.

Around the lake directly in front of the hotel is a well maintained path, a circuit of 5 km; just right if you want to stretch your legs and fill your lungs with fresh air but don‘t want to stay out too long in case it starts raining again or you wish to be back in good time to change for dinner.

Looking back towards our end of the lake

This would make a lovely spot to sit and ponder on a warmer day.

By the time we had reached the opposite end of the lake, the rain had stopped completely, and on the way back along the other side of it we decided to follow a signpost to the village of Nesselwängle, only about half an hour away. 

The path to the village lead through beautiful green hilly meadows with woodland and steep mountain slopes rising at the back.

We had a little look around the village which was very quiet with nobody out on foot, just a few cars passing through.

A remnant of the 1960s

Lost Place

Inside the surprisingly spacious village church

Another signpost pointed us in the direction of Haller, the settlement where our hotel is, on a different path than the one on which we had reached Nesselwängle.

Coming towards our hotel from the back

All in all, we had roughly 11 km under our belts when we arrived at the hotel, on easy paths with no challenging ups or downs.

Dinner was excellent again, and we had signed up for a wine tasting afterwards, which we found more interesting than yesterday‘s gin tasting. 

(That‘s it with the tastings for this holiday, by the way; there aren‘t any others scheduled while we are here, and we much prefer just the one glass of 1/8 l of a good wine to go with our main course - or simply plain water).