Today is our last day in beautiful Austria! We took the Lakes District Tour today and saw such a beautiful area of Austria, and we only scratched the tip of the iceberg! Here are some pictures of our day...
Wolfgang Lake and the town of St. Gilgen.
Schofberg Mtn.
St. Gilgen again with Wolfgang Lake in the background...
St. Wolfgang town-- very old! I would've loved to have poked around here for longer, but we had to get on the busses. At one point, we thought about ditching the tour bus and just getting a taxi back to Salzburg, but we didn't want to have any trouble and then miss our flight out the next day (it was a very early flight that we had to get up at 3am to catch)... but this town was full of cute little mom and pop type shops with a lot of cute things to look at! It had a lot of arts and crafts of the area.
Building dating back to 1537!! Renovated in 1984...
Cute flowers on the balconies-- so European! I love it!
Altar piece in the St. Wolfgang church.
Here is the arch bishop that built this church. The story is that he threw an ax (pictured in his hand) and where it fell is where he built this church. Then, if that's not crazy enough, he made a deal with SATAN, yes SATAN, to help him build it faster. (Why on earth didn't he just ask Heavenly Father for help to build it faster! I'm sure he would've and without all the consequences!! Hahahaha!) The deal was that the first soul to enter the church after it was built belonged to Satan. This "soul" ended up being a wolf (hence the name of the town being Wolfgang). Seriously, I don't know why it's so hard for people to accept the truth, but they easily believe in all these crazy superstitious things!! Inside the church there's a big shrine to the patron saint of the church who the people traveled for miles to see because he forgave ALL your sins! Right next to the shrine was a smaller statue of the Savior Jesus Christ on the cross... do you see the irony in this??? HE'S the one who really has the power to forgive all your sins, but the people think that they have to go through these saints to access that blessing. Such apostasy! The truth makes so much more sense, but people will believe all this other stuff that is so much harder for my mind to get! I'm grateful for the Restoration of the Gospel and the knowledge I have! At one point our guide (not Roman) kind of referred to this pilgrimage to have your sins remitted as being sort of silly... that you don't really NEED that anymore! Even more ludicrous! We all still need forgiveness because we still sin, but we have to go to the right Source! People are really mixed up-- that Nicean creed really messed things up and someone's gonna be in big trouble!!
A picture of the map of the Lakes District.
Here is a traditional Dirndl and Leiderhosen of this area. This is clothing that they still wear, in fact, in this town (Bad Ischl) we saw many people young and old just wearing a more casual version of this to buy their food at the market. It was so cool to see! You don't see this in Vienna or any of the big cities, but out here in the countryside in the Alps it's very common. Each area has their own colors and pattern, so you can tell where someone is from by this. I almost bought a dress...here you can see the leather pants that Roman was wearing. Bad (means bath or spa) Ischl is where royalty came to sit in these "baths" that they have naturally here for healing purposes. It's just a big tourist trap now.
Enjoying a magnum bar in Bad Ischl wishing we'd stayed in Wolfgang.
The shopping was horrible here and very touristy. Same shopping I have at home! Ugh!!
The lady behind us who ran the shop spoke NO English-- the first one we came in contact with that didn't and it was our last day! Pretty good odds! She understood that we wanted the magnums though... we made that really clear! Hahahahaha!!!!
Hahaha we saw this back in Salzburg! The golden arches are everywhere...
they're just prettier in Austria!
Our hotel room from the street outside. All three windows were our room.
Goodbye Austria!! Later we got cleaned up and went to the farewell dinner in the restaurant at the hotel. It was really warm and muggy! The A/C didn't work very well in the rooms either... needless to say we didn't sleep very well here, but it was such a quaint and beautiful hotel with such wonderful people and service! I loved Salzburg, Vienna and Austria! I'm ready to go home though!
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