Saturday, September 21st
Hello from Zell am Zee (Zell on the sea, lake, water, etc). It’s a small town on
a lake about a km wide and 3 km long. Of course, it’s surrounded by mountains
and we are staying in a "Zimmer" (B & B) in another beautiful chalet type home
half way up the hill. Our balcony looks out over the town, the lake and in the
distance, the mountains on the other side. It’s about 70 km south of Salzburg.
Unfortunately the weather has not cooperated for the last few days but we are
still having a nice time. I can’t feel too bad because we had such a great time
in Switzerland weather-wise and then had 3 fabulous days in the Italian Dolomite
Mountains. This was the discovery of our trip. I think that we both found them
close to our favourite area of Switzerland in beauty and accessibility.
The Dolomites are still part of the Alps but much more rugged with jagged peaks
that rise up to 10,000 ft in many fantastic shapes. They are in northern Italy,
about 200 km south of Innsbruck and Salzburg Austria. We stayed at another
small, quaint town, with heavy Austrian influence - food, architecture,
language. (This area was actually ceded from Austria after WW1 and given to
Italy.) Stayed in another chalet B & B - huge room, huge balcony that looked out
over a green valley with the snow tipped Alps in the distance.
The highlight of our stay was walking in the Alps de Suisi - one of the largest
alpine meadows in Europe. Two different days we drove up the narrow mountain
road just above out town for about 8 kilometers and that put us at about 4000 ft
- right in the middle of the meadow. From here you had the choice of hundreds of
different trails - everything from paved paths to narrow trails that required
good hiking equipment. There were at least a half dozen lifts operating from
various parts of the area which gave you additional access to the higher
elevations. We were surrounded by open pasture land where cows grazed, and in
the distance, the Dolomite peaks - almost completely surrounding us. Beautiful
sunny weather for both days - a great experience.
From there we drove to Cortina, after traveling on the Great Dolomite road -
another spectacular high altitude highway on another beautiful day. Spent one
night in Cortina - site of the 1956 winter olympics and the most famous ski
resort in Italy before arriving here on Thursday.
Off to supposedly the best castle hostel in Europe tomorrow and then on to
Vienna. After that we will head back west along the Danube, hopefully spend one
evening in Munich for Oktoberfest (starts today) before flying back next Sunday
from Frankfurt.
All the best to everyone,
Larry