Day 1 in Italy

We flew over the Alps on our way from Rome to Munich

This church was on our drive from Munich to Prissians, where we stayed.
One of the first castles we saw

On our first full day, we went to Castle Roncolo Runkelstein. The name may not sound very Italian, that is because this area was once part of Austria.
I loved how they weaved together the fences with old vines.
These are baby grapes. I thought they were cute.
When we got to Castle it was not open to view yet, so we hiked up the mountain on one of the numerous paths. As you can see, Tim was not used to it! Maybe it was just a tough hike.
Tim found this slug on the path. The picture does not do him justice. He was probably a good 5-6 inches long.

Through the grapevine leaves
This is the Castle afore mentioned


If you look above the balconey you can see some of the frescos. We could not take pictures inside, so this was the best I could do to show them. It was also known as the illustrated Castle and was unusual because the frescos were not religion oriented, like most. They mostly showed scenes from daily life but also has the tale of Tristian and Isolde.

This is a view of the Castle from below. Pretty impressive.
This was another castle in a vineyard on our drive. We could have seen a diffrent castle everyday for a month and not been further the 40 kilometers from the place we stayed.
We hiked to St Mikael's which was about 4 km from the place we stayed. It was a beautiful hike and we passed a lot of locals on the way.

This was part of the hike. I may put more pictures up later but I am not home yet and it is hard to learn new picture software with two kids hanging on you!
The white and brown building with the dark brown roof in the middle of the picture with two decks is where we stayed.
Another woven fence on our walk back from the church.

More to come in the near future. That was all I could get done now.