The Gardens of Trauttmansdorff Castle in Merano

My parents and sister are visiting us. My parents have been on a cruise from Istanbul to Venice for the past two weeks. My mom took the train to Trento from Venice on Thursday. My dad went to Milan to meet my sister's plane on Friday morning. So Friday, Mom and I planned to go shopping in Merano, a town to the north of Trento in the Alto Adige (if you're Italian), aka Sud-Tirol (if you're Austrian). I commented flippantly on Thursday evening over dinner "I don't know what else there is to do in Merano anyway, except visit the Christmas markets." Two minutes later, Tim slid his computer across the table with a web browser open to a link about a botanical garden just outside of the city center of Merano. It looked amazing. So even though it was supposed to be a rainy day, we decided to give it a try.

We bought a fifteen euro transit pass that covered our train trip to and from Merano (including a switch in Bolzano) and the local city buses in Merano and headed out to the gardens. The damp and slightly chilly day might have kept the crowds down, but the gardens were simply amazing. I took Tim's fancy camera, but I took on the simple (no-zoom, no-macro) lens. As you will be able to tell from my mediocre photographs, this is obviously a place Tim will have to visit himself to take his own photos; at which point my photos here can be replaced by his much better ones...

For Mom and me, though, it was clearly the perfect time of year to be visiting a botanical garden---every direction we turned, there were tulips in bloom.

See, tulips...

We walked up to "Thun's overlook", which cantilevers out over the gardens and provides great views of the valley. Here's mom just before starting up the steps. She's been having some trouble with her knee. When we looked up and discussed whether we should climb up or not, she shook her head and said, "I probably shouldn't, but I really want to." So of course we did.

Partway up to the overlook, looking back down to the grounds of the main parts of the gardens...

This castle was once the vacation home of Sissi, the Empress of Austria.

We got out on Thun's overlook. It's up high (Mom doesn't like heights) and the floor of the platform is see-through (which neither of us really cared for).

In the back of the garden is a section called the "Lover's Garden." It's full of water features, bronze sculptures, and some larger sculptures made of colored glass. It was really pretty.

Of course we had to try out the lily pads...

Through the aviary was yet another overlook across the valley. Also with a grate floor...

In addition to the beautiful tulips, there were also several different kinds of exotic flowers in bloom...

There was this flowering dogwood...

 

And a tulip tree...

They had these carefully planted flows of blue and orange flowers. Which were really striking, but we didn't figure out the point until later...

... when we got down to the bottom, and it was obvious that the top portion was supposed to evoke the river that led into the lower waterfalls.

We went inside the orchid house... full of (not surprisingly) orchids:

At the back of the orchid house was a small "terrarium" with a lizard, some butterflies, and all kinds of insects. Including these leaf cutter ants.

And this leaf bug.

This is a statue of Sissi enjoying the rainy view from the castle balcony. We ducked into the restaurant in the castle to enjoy some soups for lunch.

There was also a chapel in the castle with this really cool wooden door.

Here's a more compelling view of Thun's overlook. On a clear day, I bet the view is amazing.

There was a random sculpture garden tucked into a courtyard of the castle. It had some weird stuff in it.

Did I mention that the tulips were in bloom?