Castle time.

There were two choices presented to us for today (Tuesday), either a nice walk to a castle on a hill (The main selling point was that it was supposedly easy going with a slight uphill towards the end)or a ride on a cable car and then a walk uphill to a restaurant etc. It was a unanimous decision that we would go check out the former option. After another early get up and downing as much meat on bread as i could stomach we started walking out of the small village of Natz. Just along the side of the road you could a sense of the scale of how many apple tree's there were in the region. They were literally everywhere you went. Darren commented how it would be cool to have a job picking apples in Tuscany during the summer. I agreed, except we were told its quite hard to that sort of work without all the right visa's and things. The track we were following wound down a small valley where there was a hotel and restuarant (pictured). Close to this was a nice lake. Pr Helmut had drove down and with him brought some remote controlled speed boats which we watched as Mickey and Miriam raced each other. It started to drizzle so we continued walking and left the kids to their fun. Another cafe conveniently popped up on our path and it was time for coffee, for those who wanted it. Despite it being midday I didn't eat here on the recommendation there would be pizza where we would end up. We made our way up a small hill and down again through a forest...It was there the road sloped downwards into a huge valley where in the middle lay a extruding cliff face. You could see a small village on top of the hill and i noticed how good a spot it was to position a castle. By this stage we'd all split up into seperate groups as people walked at a pace they found comfortable. After crossing the bridge we started the quite steep descent that we'd been dually warned about. I liked being up the front and pushing myself as on the previous days excursions. Wayne and i hiked at a steady pace until about half way up when he keenly spotted a wild deer a couple of hundred metres away. As we tried to get closer it sprinted away off the track, it was still cool to have seen a deer in its natural habitat. At the top we caught our breath and checked out the back entrance to the castle as everyone battled their way up the steep slope. As people started gathering at the top few of us went off to find food. I was pretty hungry by this stage and joined the crew while the other went on a tour of the castle. A salami pizza later and it was our turn to check out the main attraction. We waited half an hour to have the services of an English guide which would no doubt make the experience more insightful and informative. After entering the huge wooden door there was an open area with a lawn and to the left there the family's residence who actually owned the whole place! Was nice of them to open it up to the public, must be an interesting lifestyle. Ill let the pictures do the talking as my descriptive narrative is less then adequate and really does not do it justice. A couple of things that stood out were an armoury room with all sorts of medieval killing implements and a huge collection of rifles. Another of the rooms the guide showed us contained fresco's only recently discovered which were among the oldest in Europe if my memory serves me correctly. It portrayed the story of King Arthur and dated back to the 13th century. The view from the front garden was spectacular and made us all realise exactly why the fortress had never been taken by an invading force. The guide told us a story about a wizard who lived in the castle who was well known throughout the area for fixing peoples problems i.e. crops, healing animals etc. My memory is abit hazy but i think the community suspected he could talk to animals, hence accusing him of witchcraft. That ended my first visit to a castle! The first of many hopefully. We were all really tired after the walk so got a lift for the 10 minute car trip home. A yummy dinner awaited us when we got back, Lasagne if i recall correctly :) The next day would be an adventure of misfortune as i attempted to go to Innsbruck, Austria.

In more recent news...Ive started working on a new counter at work (takeaway) and now have the added responsibility of making sandwiches every morning! It has its pro's and con's, on the one hand the time goes much quicker having more stuff to do but it means getting up early every morning(6.30am). From last week i made the decision to start walking to work as well so ive had to adjust quite a bit from my usual routine. Ive got a sense of how many people there are in this city just by the amount of traffic and people i encounter in the 1 hour it takes me to get to Fortnum and Mason's. The pollution is also very noticeable and isn't very pleasant, makes me want to breathe some clean mountain air once more...Hmm tassie air and water is something that cant be matched. Well until next time, ciao.