The Julers' Trips and Adventures: 2019 - Day 13: Salzbergwerk Berchtesgaden

The summation of today is should you have a three hour wait once you buy tickets, there's no better place to kill time than a brewery that serves great food!

Whilst staying in Berchtesgaden we have three main attractions that we want to see... the lake at Königssee, a trip up the Jennerbahn, and the local salt mine. With the first two requiring good weather, the plan was always to wait and see the forecast before decided which attraction to visit on each day. With tomorrow expected to be the brighter of the two days, the decision was made to visit the salt mine today. We'd been checking availability periodically over the last few days and even this morning there was a lot of capacity showing for the tours online, so we decided on a leisurely breakfast and to catch the 11:15 bus for the short trip to the mine.

Forrest and Cub on our first arrival at the salt mine.

However what we didn't anticipate was a load of coach trips, who hadn't booked, turning up just before we arrived so it was quite a surprise when the first available tour wasn't until 14:00! After a quick crisis meeting (that's how it felt with Forrest quite disappointed), we decided to go for the 14:45 tour, so booked tickets and headed to the local brewery for lunch. It was always the plan to stop off at Hofbrauhaus Berchtesgaden for at least a beer on the way home, this just gave us a little more time and an excuse to buy lunch.

Cub getting in on the photos to make up for the last few days' absence!

Amber and myself enjoyed a beer, Forrest an apple juice served up in a mini-tankard to look like a beer, whilst Paloma napped and we waited for our food. We'd seen some lovely looking food being delivered to tables around us, one in particular a large chunk of meet served with a pretzel, so having initially attempting to decipher the German menu and then the English version, we thought that we'd ordered the same (plus the standard when all else fails meal of frankfurter for the kids).

We were both a little disappointed when our food arrived, neither of us were successful in ordering the meals we'd seen, we can only assume they were on the specials list that never appeared with the English menus, however the disappointment was short lived since all our meals were very very good. Even the little lady, who we had to wake up when her food arrived, quickly went from grumpy teenager Paloma to the usual happy two year old Paloma once she started to tuck in.

Grumpy "teenager" Paloma (she soon cheered up).

Time quickly passed and we made our way back to the salt mine in time for our tour. By now it had calmed down a little bit, so although we were a little early we were allowed in to get ready for our underground adventure. To make sure everyone stays clean and warm (it's a consistent 12C in the mine), you have to wear a boiler suit and the kids enjoyed modelling their new outfits!

Ready to explore the mine.

It's far from a traditional tour, first you travel by train deep into the mountain side, then down two large slides, across an underground salt lake on a boat and up a funicular before getting the train back to daylight. All of this combined with many interesting details and facts on the salt mining process.

There's a strict no photos rule in the mine. It's claimed that it's for security reasons, however my thinking is it's more a money-making exercise to get people to buy the official photos (which you can see we did). Paloma may look terrified in the photo, but the first thing she did at the bottom was giggle and say "again"!