Dolomites

The Dolomites are a World Heritage Site and for a good reason.  I won’t elaborate here but the first place we headed for was here after leaving Karlstadt.  Unfortunately, it was foggy but we had a wonderful hike.  I skied near here a few years ago and will return yet again.

Pond

Beautiful!

Churches

Everything in South Tirol is perfectly, that’s PERFECTLY manicured.  I couldn’t find a piece of litter or a pothole in the road anywhere.  People take pride in their properties.

Horses

The horses are even washed down before being put in the barn.  This is also Horse Heaven!

Martina

The terrain is quite steep yet it’s intensively cultivated as pasture for a thriving farms and larch trees add an accent to the forests.

Sella Pass

This is Sella Pass where we also take a short hike.  Oetzi, the Iceman, was found nearby in 1991 by two German hikers.

Oetzi

He was named after the nearby valley where he was found as the ice retreated from an historic trade route in Southern Tirol.   He along with his clothing and hunting back-pack were  nearly completely intact.  This is a wax mock-up but you can actually view him and everything found with him at this very interesting museum in Bolzano, Italy.  

Speck 2

Well, a lot has changed since Oetzi’s day and we retire to a local pub for some smoked meat, crisp bread and local wines.

Speck 3

Here the hotel owner slices off 400 grams of ‘speck’ from a larger piece of meat.  Three still hang above him and Martina looks on with eager anticipation……

Speck

Mmmmm!   We built a smoker in our back yard in Alaska and I wanted to start smoking more than fish until the hotel owner explained to us the  dozens of steps to make such a delicacy–so it’s over-the-counter speck from now on for me and I’ll stick to smoking fish.

Wine Stube

Boy, this is the life–Oetzi never had it this good and he died with an arrow in his shoulder…..stay tuned!