Initially daunted by a five hour drive, this soon became our highlight of the trip so far. Instead of driving through the Alps as we did on our way to Bellagio, we instead drove over them - to a height of 2211 metres above sea level... From this height, needless to say, the view was spectacular and we could even see the lemons driving on the toll road motorway thousands of metres below us, who paid god only knows how many euro for an utterly incomparable drive.
After leaving Verona, stuffed with croissants, espressos, cappuccinos, cheese, salami and bread, we were ecstatic to find ourselves right in the thick of picturesque Italian countryside – complete with vineyards, mountains and castles. It was straight out of a movie! While Brad navigated our way through winding cliffs and terrain, I read up on the route and confirmed that we were driving through the Italian Dolomites and would soon find ourselves in a little town called Bolzano, which is home to a 5,000 year old Iceman! Cast your minds back to 1991 (although Conman you were just a twinkle in Dad’s eye) and you might remember the discovery of an almost perfectly preserved corpse which was later found to date back to prehistoric times. He was found in the Italian-Austrian Alps (the ones we crossed over today) by two hikers who thought they had stumbled across a big brown doll! Upon learning this we decided we had to stop and see it and decided to pay the admission fee (always a tricky call when there are always so many ‘must see’ tourist attractions around) based upon the fact that we’d only ever get one chance to see a perfectly preserved ice-man, as well as the fact that the knowledge we would gain could come in handy one day during a game of trivial pursuit! Well I’m sad to say that while it was fascinating seeing the ice-man’s original clothes and tools, I was incredibly disappointed to just see a reconstruction, and not a mummified ice-man corpse! Complete and utter false advertising in my opinion. In fact, if I could speak fluent Italian, I would write a serious letter of complaint. But thankfully Bolzano rectified itself by being absolutely charming and home to the world’s most delicious pizza!
As mentioned, today’s drive was the most stunning yet and believe you me, that is a big call to make after what we’ve seen. We crossed over into Austria in no time at all and found ourselves at our hotel in the blink of an eye. We unpacked then decided to hit the road as we had much we needed to explore. We had high hopes for Innsbruck after hearing so many wonderful things about it, and while it is pretty with a backdrop of the Austrian Alps, after what we’ve seen on our driving trips and our time in Interlaken, Switzerland, Innsbruck just doesn’t quite cut the mustard. We were expecting a small town, bustling with energy. Instead we got a small city, which while very pretty, was nothing on some of the other places we’ve been to. This made for quite a laugh as after walking around with our noses almost slightly turned up, we realised that this time last year we would have been squealing with joy, photographing every building in site. When did we become such travel snobs? When did we start saying things like, ‘only five centuries old, that’s nothing!’ So don’t get us wrong, Innsbruck is very pretty, it’s just where all the contiki and tour buses come, whereas on this trip we have come to love more of those ‘hidden gems!’ Seasoned travellers like ourselves have a taste for the finer things!
Despite still feeling a little sick from stuffing ourselves with pizza at lunch, we made the most of an Easter market which we stumbled across in the centre of town, finding a sausage stall where we ordered up a storm, complete with a couple of cans of Zipfer, the local brew. We then tried to walk it off, but gave up after three hours, instead opting for beer and cake. Croissants, cheese, salami, pizza, sausage and cake – we’re the epitome of health!
We’re back at our pad now where we’ll try and have an earlyish night as we’ll be up early to head into Germany – first stop, Neuschwanstein Castle.
Until next time.
xxx
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