TAGEBUCH / DIARY: Short trip to Alto Adige “South Tyrol”

So I went off to Tirolo in Italy that is very close to Merano last week for a short trip and to see some friends who spent their holiday there.

Couldn´t get a room in their hotel so I tried to find something nearby. And I think I have made a great choice. I stayed at “Hotel Pension Paler”. It´s a B&B but the rooms are just excellent and up to a 4 to 5 star level. The views are also wonderful.

Did my first hiking tour on the day that I arrived and went up the Hochmuth which is a very nice hiking trail.

In the evening I had dinner with my friends at their hotel. We had dinner on the terrace with a great view down to Merano and the region of Alto Adige.

Busy bumble bees at the flower pots of the terrace....

.....and a nice dessert after dinner ....:)

Next day I planned a longer trip up the Hochmuth. I took the aerial railway up there and went off to the Lakes of Sopranes. I can absolutely recommend this. It is worth going up there.

Waterfalls

Great views

Unfortunately I have underestimated the ”walking down”. My first stop after the lakes was at “Bockerhütte” which is really nice.

This beautiful rooster greeted me at the entrance!
From there it would have been a better choice to go up again another trail to the mountain station “Hochmuth” but I decided to go down the rest of the mountain. At the moment they are doing some construction on the hiking trails and just when I thought it was going a bit easier there was an alternative route I had to take. This took me 2 hours more than planned and when I got back to the hotel I was totally exhausted. The whole trip took me about seven hours and that’s a bit too much for the first day.

Next day – also due to the weather – my friends and I went to visit another valley to the “Lago di Vernago” which was nice.

After that we did a little shopping in Merano.

On Sunday my friend Andrea and I did a little hiking close to the village and visited the CastleTyrol and the Castle Auer.

Tyrol Castle
Later we had a nice dinner in the garden of a restaurant called Furggerhof.

On my last day I visited Castle Brunnenburg and after that I went to the gardens of CastleTrautmannsdorff which I think is a must. I drove by so many times and never made it to visit that place but now that I have been there I am sure that I will go there again.