June 30 - Hiking in St. Johann im Pongau, Austria

Monday
I woke up before Verle and walked across to the market to get food for breakfast. I thought I bought two half-pints of yogurt, but when we opened them, they were runny, and we realized that they were 36% cream. That's what happens when you can't read the language! It worked out OK though, because we had strawberries and bananas. We put them in the cream with some of the honey I had bought -- it was quite delicious!
At 10:30, we met the free hiking trip up the mountain with Lee. We thought it was just a short trip and didn't bring our water. It lasted until 3:30, with almost two hours of uphill climb (with rests). There were 27 in our group. Two turned back, and many mentioned that it was much more challenging than they had expected. Verle and I had to take more rests than some of the rest of the group, but others struggled, too.



It was a beautiful hike through the forest, with many lovely views of the mountains and our village below.



We stayed at the restaurant at the top for quite a long time and had a great meal there. We got to know some of the others in the group as we walked along and as we ate at the top. We ate with a mother and her two daughters from Canada and Columbia.



We really enjoyed a couple from Virginia who have just moved back to Frankfurt for a second time. He is with the American military and is now helping to set up a branch in Africa and she just finished helping make a sculpture from scrap metal in Frankfurt. One couple are from Iraq and now live in Dubai.
The walk down was much easier, but it took care not to slide on some of the wet loose rocks.



Before we went up, Lee insisted that we all have suitable shoes. He singled me out with my Ecco sandals, fearing that they would not be safe. I insisted that these sandals had walked many difficult places including Cinqua Terra and that I only had one pair of shoes along. (After that, I didn't dare slip!!!)
Our room faces west on the fourth floor and is quite hot in the afternoon, even though we close up in the morning -- there is no air conditioning. If we leave our room door open, it is cooler. A good rain came through and made it quite pleasant again. We are glad that it only sprinkled a bit while we were on the mountain.