Having more and more cold days and fog at home it is a good time now to escape to northern Italy where it is still warm and (in theory) sunny.
Leaving Wednesday noon I did not want a full afternoon of driving so we stopped over in Längenfeld (Ötztal) for one night. Sadly it was raining (this is Austria not Italy 😉 ), so we did only a short stop at Piburg Lake. Next morning we drove via Timmelsjoch, a 2474m high mountain pass, into Italy. Final destination was Meran where we stayed in Dorf Tirol high above the valley with great views above Meran. In Meran we walked the Tappeinerweg, a small path just above Meran with views of the city and lots of almost tropical plants. In the afternoon we drove up the Schnalstal to the very end to Maso Corto (Kurzras). Here we took the Gondola up to Grawand (3251m). On the way back we watched the sunset at the Vernat Lake and drove back to Meran for some Pizza :).
Saturday was one very big hiking trip – a visit of the Spronser Lakes (Spornse Seenrunde). We started at 8 at the Hochmuth Gondola. From here we hiked with very nice views high above the valley to the Hochgangscharte which is a very narrow and steep hike. From the top there was a great view of the Spronser Lakes. We visited several of the lakes and hiked back to the gondala and just arrived 5 minutes before the last one went down… A very impressive but also very long trip.
Instead of driving back directly sunday we did a small detour into the Martell valley to visit another lake – Zufrittsee (Lago Gioveretto) – with a beautiful view of the fall colours. Later we stopped at the Reschensee where only the old tower of a church is looking out of the water. The rest of the village was flooded when the dam was build.
Beginning of October was a great time to visit. Lots of fall colours in the mountains. This was definitly not the last visit to this area.