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It’s time for another edition of my 5 Favorite Pictures series!  Today we look at Hallstatt, Austria.

Hallstatt is about an hour from Salzburg by road and it’s an absolutely beautiful drive.  You can also arrive by train to the Hallstatt station and take a ferry across to the village.  It ticks about every box on the Bucolic Mountain Lake Village Checklist.  For that reason it has become fairly overrun with tourists but it is still worth a visit.  I haven’t been back in a couple of years and definitely want to return soon to capture it using some new photography techniques I’ve learned recently!

Here are my 5 favorite pictures from Hallstatt!

The village feels like a blast to the past, with wooden homes and lovely quaint decorations.  In the winter it does get quite cold there so you’ll see plenty of folks storing firewood.  I like how even the firewood is stored like it would’ve been many years ago, no metal frames here.

This lovely swan sits in front of the classic view of Hallstatt.  While I’d love to say the swan was just that peaceful-looking, there were plenty of people waiting to throw it some bread from the promenade just left of the camera’s view.

There’s something remarkably unassuming about Hallstatt for how well-known it is.  During the summer months groups of locals will gather to play music in the town’s small square.  This gentleman was carrying his bass french horn sousaphone instrument to the square for that evening’s show.

This is one of the classic views of Hallstatt, the other classic view basically from the other side of the village looking at the steeple.  The mountains form nice leading lines toward the steeple and emphasize just how dramatic and sheer the mountain faces are in this incredible place.  I also love the small boat on the right side of the village.  You won’t see speedboats on this lake, just boats that may not even have a motor going slowly along drinking in the bucolic scene.

This one is my favorite.  The dock building on the left and the tree on the right frame the space occupied by the quaint little canoe.  You can almost sense the canoe waiting for its next passenger so it can get out onto the lake again, where it truly belongs.  In the background the sun shines brightly on the lake and the mountains beckon for another look.

Have you been to Hallstatt?  What did you think?  Which of these is your favorite?