We had a nice drive yesterday in good weather. Before we left we went out in Udine and purchase a picnic of proscuitto, cheese and bread. Luther also had his wishes come true and purchased two cuban cigars. Oddly, another incomprehensible Italian rule says you must pay cash for tobacco products. Anything else you could pay with a credit card. Go figure.

We flew(!) mostly on autobahns through Italy/Austria but got off about 100 km from our final destination to put the top down and have a picnic to save ourselves for dinner. They have pleasant picnic areas along the highways.

Our next destination, Mörbisch is in the Bergenland in Austria south of Vienna. It is just at the bottom end of the Neusiedlersee, a large lake with marshes, home to many birds, foremost of which are the storks. Every town had many of the large metal nest spaces on their roofs hoping to attract the big birds to nest. They are said to be good luck. So far every town had at least two nests with mom and two babies.

We checked into the Weingut Schindler which has 6 rooms it rents out. Frau Schindler met us and offered us a glass of their wine which we enthusiastically accepted. The Weingut has an interior courtyard full of flowers and tables at which you can enjoy their wine. Our room is nice. Not fancy but fine. We are staying three nights. We walked around town, checking out the restaurants and pretty alleys full of flowers. We stopped at a Heuriger which is an establishment that serves wine and snacks – typically they have a bough from a tree to indicate they are open for business. Earlier our Frau had recommend the Sommer restaurant for dinner so we searched it out while on our walk.

Restaurant Sommer had nice outside tables. We enjoyed typical German-style food. Both of us had Weiner Schnitzels as entrees. Lucky for me I ordered the small portion! Luther’s was HUGE. We also enjoyed the local wines, the red was produced by the family who owns the restauruant. It began to rain while Luther was smoking his cigar. We huddled under the umbrella then walked (quickly) back to the Weingut.

This morning dawned cold, gray and rainy. Too bad. We had breakfast at the weingut which was nice with most things you could want. We headed out to the capital city of this area, Eisenstat. It was nice enough but since the rain was steady we drove on to Forchtenstein which has a Schloss and fortress. We visited. I couldn’t take any interior pictures but here it is on of the outside approaching.

It was impressive but the family Esterhazy were pretty disgusting. In order to be able to rule what is now Hungary they had to prove a long line of ancestry. They pretty much made it up with portraits of their non-existent relatives in their hall of the ancestors. Very pretentious folks.

The rain continued all afternoon. We went back to the lake to Rust for lunch at a seafood place. I had a nice spicy soup which, to me, seemed very Hungarian which is not so strange given we are about 2 miles from the border. Luther had a roasted chicken which was reminiscent of KFC.

After lunch we visited the Sommer Weingut. Tasted wines and endured their terrible two year old, Felix. Their wine was quite nice. We bought a case.

It is now around 7pm and happily, the sun is finally out. I looked up the weather and it should be nice through our Budapest leg of the trip. I had to buy a sweater this morning as it was only 14C today. Brrrr.