The Dolomites

We are staying in the town of St. Ulrich/Ortisei.  Many of the towns here have two names because it was originally part of Austria, so the towns had German names.  But after WWI, in redrawing the borders, it went to Italy.  So Italy renamed the towns, but some of them didn’t want to give up their original names, so two names.  We are staying  in an apartment up on the hill of town.  Getting around the tiny town with a car when we arrived was a nightmare.  None of the streets in the middle of town have names posted, and the center of town is for walking--no cars.  The roads just end at the pedestrian area.  Finally we parked and Randy went to find the owner (who is to be found in that pedestrian area).  Her English is quite limited, so by the time she went to get all of the cushions for the porch furniture (we have a big balcony) and linens for the extra bed for Joshua, and got our passports back to us, and I pantomimed (seriously) buying groceries, it was too late--the one grocery store in town had closed.  So we walked down to find it, then found a place to eat.  Our apartment building looks quite small, but we figured that there must be 10 apartments in it.  There are two levels of garages tucked under ground.  Then the front of the building has three terraced areas of grass/garden.  We are above the top area of garden, so we have a balcony--full of petunia window boxes (which we’ve been asked to water each day).  We have two bedrooms--one with a double bed and a couch to be used as a bed (with the back and arm cushions removed).  The other room has two double beds.  There is a nice bathroom and a powder room (1/2 bath); the bathroom has a washing machine.  There is a dated kitchen; to use the stovetop, you need to reach under the stove to the bottle of gas and turn it, then use a match or click lighter to light the burners.  But there is also a dishwasher.  (The owner also had to refill the lighters).  However, we do not have wi-fi.  Randy is trying to find a place in town to purchase time.  Because of some anti-terrorism legislation, the hotels here can only provide wi-fi for their guests (in many countries, hotels can sell time to non-guests).       

Today was hiking.  In the mountains.  We walked to the gondola ski lift and bought round trip tickets to the top.  The top is a plateau, but not completely flat, and full of hiking trails.  So we put sunscreen on our Minnesota skin and hiked (in hindsight, we should have used more sunscreen!).  We hiked for a few hours then stopped for lunch.  In the photo, we ate on the front porch of that cabin (no one was home) with the Dolomites as our view.  Oh-Dolomites are the craggy rocks--they look kind of like giant termite hills.  They are made of Dolomite rock.  Anyway, we dragged our tired bodies for a few more hours, then went down again.  We are now examining our blisters and putting aloe vera gel on our sunburns!  

It was a very pretty area to hike in--it would be even better with more sunscreen and hiking boots and socks!  More mountain hiking tomorrow!