From the Dolomites to Venice

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We just arrived in Venice, but I want to catch up on our hike in the Dolomites.

From Salzburg we took the train to Bolzano, the main town of the Alto Adige (if you're Italian) or Sudtirol (if you're Austrian). There's still a very strong German-speaking presence here, even though the area was grabbed by Italy after the First World War.

On Monday we took a bus from Bolzano to Selva, a small town in the beautiful Val Gardena, and started our hike. At first it was a pleasant stroll up the gently climbing valley, enclosed on both sides by towering, jagged peaks. Before long the terrain became much steeper and we climbed up on stony trails to the first rifugio, Puez. It sits in a high meadow, just above the cliff over the valley. It's on a well-travelled route called the Alta Via 2, and so is much bigger and busier than the huts in Austria. We had a 4-course dinner, sitting at a table with a friendly Swedish couple and a father and son from Koeln. Our beds were in a dorm, but we were so tired from the exertions of the day that we slept well.

The next day we were on the Alta Via 2, so saw many hikers going in both directions. We crossed two passes, although the ascents weren't too difficult, since we were already at a good altitude. The most challenging part of the day was the descent from the second pass: about 300 m on switchbacks over very steep, sandy ground!

On to the next rifugio, Schueterhuette, which was also busy with Alta Via 2 traffic. There was a huge group of older Italians staying, which made the place very lively. The food was even better than the night before, and this rifugio offers hot showers!

The third day started off very foggy. The fog rose, so that you could see the trail, but the peaks were in cloud. This was an easier hike, following the base of another spiky range of mountains. We were in pine and larch forest much of the time. After a couple of hours the heavens opened, and we got to test how rainproof our lightweight jackets were. Not too bad in my case, but Lynn's didn't hold up well. And both our packs were clearly not designed for heavy rain!

We were very happy to reach the next rifugio, Malga Brogles. It started out as a farmhouse - that's what malga means - but they've just finished building an addition with a bar and dining room on the ground floor and 6 or 8 bedrooms upstairs. The group of Italians had arrived before us and the dining room was full of wet backpacks and Italian conversation!

We unpacked out soggy packs in our room, and by the time we went down for a bit of lunch, the Italian squad had moved on.

There were only 8 of us staying at the rifugio, so we all sat together for dinner and breakfast next morning. That's one of the pleasures of hut-to-hut hiking: meeting fellow hikers and exchanging travel stories.

The trail we had wanted to take back to Selva was closed because of a huge overhanging boulder, so we took a shorter downhill route, through forest, following a river from spring to torrent, to another town. Bus back to Bolzano and right onto a train to Verona.

We had 2 nights in Verona, which allowed enough time to visit the ruins of the Roman theatre and arena. We noticed by chance that there was a concert at the 18th C Teatro Filarmonico. We splurged on a pair of good seats and enjoyed a programme of Vivaldi concertos.

Next, on to Venice..

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