We woke up bright and early. Surprisingly, we don't seem to sleep that long in Europe. We would go to bed at 11pm and wake up at 4+am. In the end, we only left the apartment at 9am since most of the places weren't open yet. 

We had breakfast by the Vlatava river. It was so tranquil and peaceful just sitting by the river and chilling with my cappuccino with honey and white chocolate (but in all honesty it just tasted like normal coffee) and my eggs breakfast. There were ducks around us, and they looked so beautiful like those wooden ducks haha. The waiter helped us to take this photo which I love.

Our bus ride took about 4 hours and we arrived Salzburg safely. Went grocery shopping, got BK for dinner and had an early night.

Day #4: Hallstatt

We got up bright and early (yet again) to catch our bus to Bad Ischl station. Hallstatt is a small town just outside of Salzburg that recently got "touristified" these few years. The view there is said to amazing, and I have to agree. To go to Hallstatt was a bit of a challenge for us though, since we needed to catch a connecting train plus a short boat ride to reach there. And well, stupid me that didn't notice the time we had to catch our connecting train was 3 mins. However, as our bus reached 2 mins later - we only had 1 min to catch our train. Once the bus stopped, we immediately ran and thank God I knew where to go and we caught the train phew.

If I were to describe Hallstatt, it would have to be a sadly charming place. The town itself was really small, you could walk from one end to another in 30 mins. There was this viewing place that was constantly crowded with tourists because of the amazing view it had behind. I looked over at this house and was intrigued by the sign. It had at least 3 languages, telling the people to be quiet and respectful to the residents living there. To treat this place as you would in a museum, not a marketplace. Sadly, the advice fell on deaf ears as tourists crowded around and made lots of noise. 

Hallstatt

Love this photo so much! Mad props to the photographer for helping us capture this memory ❤️

We pretty much wandered through the town, had some curry rice, beef goulash and ribs for lunch which my parents were terribly excited for. They were excited for - the rice of course. And, my dad had hot wine for the first time. Tasted pretty weird to me. 

Because this town was high up near the mountains, the weather was so erratic. It was pretty much raining the entire time with strong winds. But all of a sudden, there was this brief period of sunshine and it was when we took photos. After maybe 15-30 mins, it started to pour heavily yet again. And, we experienced snow!! For a little bit, like 1-2 mins. The snow was like little rain droplets but heavier. Super cool.

Here's some photos took in Hallstatt:

Look at the weather contrast in just a matter of minutes!

Clear skies 😌

A small waterfall we discovered

I think it was at this moment when I started to wonder - why do we all scramble to take photos? If only our eyes could remember vividly these stunning views, we wouldn't need to fight to take photos, isn't it? But then again, if we remembered everything so clearly, this would include undesirable memories to be retained in our brain as well. Would that be good?

Then I asked myself the next question - what about if we could only retain the good memories and not the bad ones? And my brain sort of got the answer itself. We wouldn't make new memories if we always kept the old ones. If we always remembered the good ol times and how perfect it was, we probably may not have the desire to make new ones. Well at least, that's my two cents. Feel free to let me know if you have any interesting perspective to add on!