Day 10 Venice - Graz

What's that song...on the road again, and we headed north to the border...sadly leaving Italy and coming into the beautiful scenery of Austria....stopping for the compulsory half hour stop for driver & bus, we then crossed the border...these days that usually just consists of driving through..but on occasions you have to stop...our next stop was at the Lipizzaner Stud at Piber...here we had a tour of the stud seeing the Mares and foals, then onto the stallions...the Lipzzaner horses unlike ours have their birthdays on their actual day of birth not like the thoroughbred racing horses who all have the same date, regardless of when they are born...the Lipzzaner foals are born dark and as they get older they turn white..the older ones are sold likewise any that are not required or those which they are retiring...the foals and mares graze on the mountain pastures at an altitude of 1500 metres during the summer and then they go to horse kindy to start training....the Lipzzaner horses are on the endangered species listing of domesticated horses ..after a late lunch we continued onwards towards Graz where we arrived at 4.30pm, a quick room allocation and we were out on a walking tour, however no one was enthused about it at all but...it was 1 1/2 hrs later before we got back, bored, tired and ready to get changed for dinner at 8pm to farewell our driver and Tour Director...tomorrow Monday we head further east and onto the cruise..yippee no more unpacking/packing...

Graz