Italian Honeymoon: Part Two – Castelrotto {the Dolomites}

We traveled by train from Varenna to Milan, from Milan to Verona, and Verona to Bolzano. When we arrived in Bolzano everyone was speaking German. Chad had to give me the brief history lesson: that prior to WWI Northern Italy was part of the Austrian Empire, after losing the war, Austria lost that region to Italy which redefined the Austrian/Italian boarder. Hence, why they were all speaking German in Bolzano. When we got to Castelrotto (Italian) aka  Kastelruth (German) everything was written in Italian and German but the primary language spoken seemed to be German.

Luckily, my hubby was able to learn German on the bus ride there. 🙂

When we got off the bus, we were immediately impressed. The scenery was jaw droppingly gorgeous.

Those were the first two pictures we took when we got off the bus.

We eventually made it to our Bed & Breakfast. We stayed at Hotel Cavallino. It was 114 euros a night and worth every penny!!

Our room had a balcony and a view of the mountains! {As you can tell, Chad was super excited!}

We took a walk around the town to get a feel for it.

I swear this place was a photographers dream!!

The architecture was so unique

Chad looked up a ‘romantic stroll’ for us to take upon arrival and this was the view:

The next morning we got up early to take a lift up to Alpe Marinzen Alm.

This was the view from the lift.

Heading up.

There was so much to see and do along our hike

Hiking up to Compatsch.

Stairway to Heaven?

Enjoying the views along the way.

We ran into some baby goats….they were adorable

We even saw a slide along the way!

The views along our hike were so amazing…

We had so much fun! Here is another beautiful view on the way up.

We were so lucky to run into another hiker who could take our picture 🙂

We snapped a few more 🙂

a favorite of mine…

A view on our way up to the panorama from Compatsch.

We did a lot of hiking and we had to stop for plenty of awesome photo ops!

we couldn’t get enough…

Mt. Schlern

Finally reached another lift that was going to take us closer to the panorama

…and here we are on the lift! It had been a long morning with a lot of hiking. We had to take a ‘Kinder Break’. 🙂

On the lift up to the panorama look out at Alpe di Siusi.

The Panorama view

We felt like we were on top of the world!

A great view of Sasso Plato.

Everything was more beautiful than we could have imagined!

After looking at the panorama we took a lift back down and saw some more amazing views.

View of Siusi on our way back down.

Another awesome view.

After we got back down we went to Unterlanzin to go horseback riding.

{This was Chad’s first time horseback riding. It was so adorable}

We couldn’t have picked a better place to go horseback riding. The views were amazing; I felt like I was dreaming!

We had so much fun in The Dolomites. I would recommend it to everyone!! This trip definitely inspired us to take our next vacation to Austria, Germany, and Switzerland.

NEXT STOP: FLORENCE