Yesterday, I managed in my blog post here on Hive that I went to Hallstatt in Austria with my family last week. It was a wonderful travel and a beautiful place. We only spent a couple of hours in Hallstatt, but those were hours we will remember for a long time. Not only because it was beautiful, not only because we had made a puzzle with 500 pieces of Hallstatt before arriving, thus giving the children an extra motivation and curiosity about the place, but also because we ate a meal in Hallstatt, and one of the things we tasted was the local trout, straight from the lake surrounding the village.
Of course, who knows, maybe this is just a trick from the local restaurant, and the trout might be from somewhere completely different, but we decided to believe our waiter, and bought a plate with this local fish. It was, by far, the most expensive meal we ordered, but my thought was - if we are here, then let us make it rememberable. I could probably have saved $6 by ordering some other, normal meal, but who cares... if we first visit Hallstatt, then let us taste the local fish... If it tastes like crap, it will still remain a memory, if it is good, then that will become a memory. Ordering a pizza (for the 200th time in our lives will not become a memory no matter what...)
So, we ordered the trout and it was actually super delicious! So, the end of the story was also good, and we have often mentioned the trout in small conversations about our hours in Hallstatt since then.
So what?
I try to spend as little money as possible. But, there are situations in which you should open up your wallet and spend some money, in order to make things a memory, and make it worth the while. If we first traveled to Hallstats and spent hours and hours of traveling to get there, why "shrink" the experience by not spending some extra dollars (that is, Euros) in a restaurant or in a souvenir shop?
The village of Hallstatt
I should also say that we were very lucky. I can easily imagine that Hallstatt is so packed with tourists normally that it is almost impossible to walk around in the streets there. But, due to COVID, we could easily walk around and enjoy the village, the mountains, the air, the lake, and everything... without bumping into tourists all the time!