Trip to northern Italy

As part of my summer vacation this year I had decided to go see the Dolomites in northern Italy. The trip became significantly cheaper when I got my plane ticket for free (I had a canceled flight in January, so they gave me vouchers for a free flight), although I had to fight a bit to actually get my ticket. Six weeks of phone calls and promises of "We'll send you the tickets first thing tomorrow morning" finally resulted in valid flight tickets. The worst thing is that I have gotten used to dutch "customer service" by now, so I wasn't too pissed off about this.

Venice


I started my trip Saturday the 7th of July going to Venice on a surprisingly painless trip into the city. Bus shuttle from the airport was convenient and on time, the Vaporetto was easy to find and use and not too crowded, I had no trouble finding the right spot to get off, and the Hotel was right where I expected it to be. And guidebooks tell you that Venice is supposed to be hard to navigate...

I dumped my luggage and went off to do some basic sightseeing to orient myself. In a couple of hours I found the Rialto bridge, walked along the San Marco Sestiere and found the Piazza San Marco with the basilica, the Doge's Palace and the Campanile. I queued for probably 30 minutes to get up to the top of the Campanile to get the big picture of Venice. There were lots of people everywhere, so I decided to postpone the Doge's palace and the Basilica San Marco for now. I spent the rest of the afternoon just walking around aimlessly, trying to get to know the city.

Sunday morning I went into the Doge's palace, looking at the courtrooms, the bridge of sighs, the prisons and some other rooms. I liked the cartographer's room. It had two giant globes and wall paintings depicting maps of the known world at the time of Venice's golden age. Back then traveling really was an adventure...

I had hoped to see the Basilica San Marco early, before the tourist crowds arrived, but it was closed due to Sunday service. I had the general feeling in Venice that most tourists stayed in a really small area of the city - around the Piazza San Marco, along the walk along the Grand Canal next to San Marco, around the Rialto bridge and on the "main street" between the railway station and Piazza San Marco. I found that just by walking a couple of blocks away from the "main street" you would stop hearing people speaking American, and start hearing people speaking Italian. Side streets in Venice were often quiet and charming, and it was good fun walking around, looking at old houses and narrow, winding streets. I must say that the street layouts were different from most cities I have been in, so I had some trouble navigating whenever I wanted to go somewhere other than the main touristic sites. The path between the railway station and Piazza San Marco is really well signposted, so contrary to what guidebooks tell you , there is no problem finding your way to the main sights of Venice.


As I could not go into the Basilica San Marco, I decided to explore the islands of the lagoon around Venice. I had a really nice tourist map which explained the boat system in Venice really well, so it was fairly easy finding the right Vaporetto stop to go to the outer islands. I spent a couple of hours going on the ferry out to a small fishing village called Burano north of Venice, known for its colorful houses and lace-making. This was a charming small village, very different from Venice itself. I probably spent an hour just walking around looking at the small, colorful houses. I spent the rest of the afternoon just walking along the Dorsoduro and St. Croce districts letting myself get lost in the maze of twisting streets and crooked bridges. Venice is small enough that you're never really lost, because sooner or later you'll end up on the "main street" or some tourist sight and then you can easily find your approximate location. One confusing thing was that some streets had more than one name, so the name you're looking for may not be on the map. I spent some time looking for the Scala di Bovolo, and in the end I only found it because I spotted a street sign pointing to it. I don't think I would have found it using only the map, due to this "many names for the same place"-problem.


Monday morning I walked to the Basilica San Marco, without my camera. A lot of the churches and other sights in Venice don't allow photography, and won't let you bring in a backpack. I saw a lot of tourists figuring this out only after they'd queued for half an hour to get into the church... The church itself was pretty spectacular, with big mosaics and lots of statues. I must say I think Hagia Sofia in Istanbul is more impressive, if only for sheer size and the sense of awe you get when you walk in there. What I found most interesting in there was the four really detailed, full size bronze horses from the 2nd century. It is a special feeling to look at art at this level that's almost two thousand years old. They were stolen from the Hippodrome at Constantinople after Venice invaded. In fact, the whole church was full of stuff the venetians had stolen from other places, so it felt a bit like the British Museum in London.

I spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the city parts of Venice I had not yet seen, taking some small rest stops at the hotel room in order to cool down. It was really hot in Venice when I was there - around 32-33 degrees, and there was a lot of moisture in the air, so it was really nice to have a quiet hotel room with a kick-ass air conditioner.

The next morning I got up really early to get a look at the city without the tourists. Most tourists live outside the city and "commute" into the city in the morning, so by living in Venice itself I had the opportunity to have a look before the first trains rolled into the city. It was nice to see the Rialto, the Grand Canal and the Piazza San Marco almost empty.

Bolzano
I left my hotel, and took an early Eurostar-train to Verona and then to Bolzano. The train system was easy to navigate, ran on time, the ticket-machines had the option of English language, and they accepted my dutch pinpas as payment, so the trip to Bolzano was also quite painless.


I spent half an hour walking around with my backpack, looking for the hotel, because the hotel had the wrong location info on the booking site I used. I walked around in the center for a while after dumping my luggage, picking up some hiking maps of the regions I was planning to visit. In the afternoon I took the cable car up to Soprabolzano to see the view of the western Dolomites. From the top I took the small train to Klobenstein to get the panoramic view. The villages on top of the hill seemed really overdeveloped. Everywhere where you had a vantage point, someone had built a hotel or a restaurant, so I had to walk for maybe 30 minutes into the forest before I found a spot where I could see all of the mountains. The area up there was hilly forests, much like eastern Norway, with spruce trees and blueberry.

The evening I spent trying to find out how to get to Val Gardena. There's a lot of buses going from Bolzano to the western part of Sud-Tirol, but they're not very good at giving out information. There were almost no bus schedules at the bus station, so I had to go to the train station to find proper schedules. At the bus station, the clerks did not understand any language other than Italian, and the tv screens with departures only listed final destinations for the buses. After the first day I figured out that the best way to get around was just to ignore the bus station and walk straight over to the buses to talk to the bus drivers. They spoke native German, knew where all the buses were going and would sell me tickets to wherever I was going...


Wednesday morning I jumped on the bus to Ortisei, at the start of the Val Gardena. The bus drove along a very scenic, narrow and steep(18% in places) road to get to the Val Gardena, so it was a nice ride up to Ortisei. From Ortisei I took a cable car up to Mount Seceda (2450m) and walked into a truly spectacular panorama. From the top you could see six or seven different mountain groups, all looming over the Val Gardena. The high point for me was seeing the Odle Geisler group in real life. It was a picture of the Odle Geisler that first made me look into going to the Dolomites, and it really felt like I had accomplished a mission by finally getting there and being able to walk over to the crease and look over the edge.

I had bought a trail guide translated from German earlier, and this proved to be the best guidbook I brought with me. The Eyewitness books had lots of factual errors, and completely ignored some major sights, so I was not very impressed with those. The trail guide suggested a classic route from Seceda down to Selva di Val Gardena, so that was my goal for the day. I walked for four hours down the side of the mountains into Selva, and it was a really great hike. The only problem was that it was very steep - the altitude difference was 1100 meters. The trails were easy, and I was in better shape than I've been for a long time, so I was partially running down the slopes, stopping only to take pictures from time to time and to admire the fantastic view. The last hour or so of the hike into Selva was boring - gravel roads and paved roads going into what turned out to be a 110% touristic village. It seemed like every house in Selva di Val Gardena was a hotel or a rental apartment of sort, and they were building several big hotels in the town center. Selva di Val Gardena is the main starting point for many tourists hiking in the western Dolomites, and I am very happy I didn't stay there.


The next morning I was really feeling the 1100m descent from the day before. My thighs were really hurting and I had difficulties in walking down stairs. It took some time to pull myself out of bed to get down to the bus station for a new hike. This day I took the bus to Seis, to hike the Seiser Alm, and hopefully get up the backside of Sciliar(Schlern). The Seiser Alm is an enormous alpine meadow on the plateau above Val Gardena, and from up there you have great views of the surrounding mountains. I walked towards the Touristensteig, trying to do another classic hike, this one going up to the top of the mountain, to the Rifugio Bolzano. The views from the Touristensteig were awesome, so I soon forgot about the pain in my thighs. One problem with living in Bolzano, though, was that I was had to make sure I made the last bus home, so early on I found out I could not go to Rifugio Bolzano and back in time. I went about two-thirds of the way up the mountain, had a quick lunch and turned back. This was also a very nice hike, although it would have been nicer to reach the summit.


Friday I wanted to see the Rosengarten group, so I took the bus to Karersee(Lago di Carezza), which is one of the major tourist sights of the western Dolomites. It is a small lake with a lot of different shades of green, and normally you can see the Latemar peaks reflected in the surface of the lake. From the lake I walked into the village, to take the lift up into the Rosengarten group.


The Rosengarten group is the subject of a local legend. Once upon a time, there was a dwarf king called Laurin who had a nice castle and a very pretty rose garden at the spot where this mountain group stands today. Through magic and trickery, the dwarf king managed to kidnap the fair princess Simhilde from the humans living in the valleys, to live happily ever after. But a human hero called Dietrich von Bern wouldn't stand for this, so he rode up to the castle, fought the dwarf king and forced him to give up Simhilde. In a last bit of defiant sorcery, the dwarf king screamed "You can have my woman, but you can never have my ROSE GARDEN!!!" (Italians are strange...) and with a snap of the fingers he transformed his rose garden to huge mountains. once in a while, at sunset and sunrise, you can see the mountains turn their original pink and red color.

From the top of the lift I walked around the edge of the mountains, until I got to a rifugio under the Red Wall - one of the more popular mountains in the range. I climbed a small ridge myself, and got some nice pictures from the top. I really felt the fear of heights coming on when sitting up there taking pictures, when I realized I was less than half a meter on either side from a drop that was probably 6-8 meters. I was really careful climbing back down again.

The views on this day were probably the best of the trip, and by now I had seen most of the major mountain group of the western part, so I felt satisfied when leaving Bolzano. I didn't get to see Cortina and Lago di Misurina, so I'll have to do the eastern part some other time.
I think the funniest thing about going to the Dolomites was having to speak German in Italy, because people didn't understand English. It's been some years since high school, so I was struggling a bit for the first couple of days, but later in the week it came back to me. Thank you, high school!

Verona


I had a very early flight from Venice on Sunday, so I spent my last day in Verona, in order to be able to make the flight. I walked around the city looking at the main sights. The opera was sold out so I didn't get to watch the opera from the Arena. I went into the arena during the day, and it felt more like a football stadium than an ancient ruin. When I saw the lines of people starting to queue up to get in two hours before the show started I was glad I didn't get tickets. I couldn't get a reasonably priced hotel in the center of Verona, so I had to stay in a hotel at the edge of town. This meant I had to ride in a bus for twenty minutes to get to and from the city center, but I got to see a lot of Verona. It was extremely hot. 35 degrees Celsius during the day, and 30 degrees at 20.30 in the evening.

The next morning I had to get up at 05.45 to make the train, changing to bus at Mestre before leaving from the small, crowded and inefficient airport at Venice Marco Polo. After a week of sun, it was a downer to get back to rainy Holland.

For pictures, look at my flickr feed.

Venice pictures

Dolomites pictures

Verona pictures