The best WHS require some effort to get to. That's also the case with Halstatt, at least when you're using public transport. I went out there on a day trip from Salzburg. The journey required a bus ride (1.5 hours, bus 150 to Bad Ischl), some waiting at the train station, a 40-minute train ride and finally the 3-minute ferry across the Halstatt lake to the town proper. The scenery is interesting enough all the way. Although I visited in winter, there was not much snow on the ground. The closer you get to Halstatt, the Alpine peaks get more impressive and they were snow-white of course.

Halstatt is a popular tourist destination, especially among Asians. A bunch of them (young Chinese) shared the same bus with me. We all anticipated the first view of the town across the lake, as we had already seen so many pictures of that. I discovered that the iconic pictures mostly are taken from the side of Halstatt itself, not from the other side of the lake. There are some uglier buildings on the lakefront that are never shown. Also, there are cars and a parking lot, somehow I always had thought that the town was inaccessible by car (it's just blocked on one side).

Nevertheless these minor misgivings, I enjoyed strolling around. I took lots of photos, it's so extremely picturesque. I also visited the World Heritage Museum, which in effect is a local museum that tells the story of Halstatt during the ages. The best is saved for the final rooms of the exhibition: that's where several of the Iron Age treasures are shown that have been here. They have been in a museum in Vienna before. The weather prevented me from a longer visit: it was pretty cold, and the parts of the Dachstein mountain are closed in winter. Even the town's statues and fountains were totally hidden beneath the wooden covering.