Saturday, July 2, 2016

From Bolzano to the Dolomites


We spent the morning exploring more of Bolzano, the gateway to the Dolomites.
We were at the Archaeological Museum when it opened and were first in to see Otzi. This was a repeat of our last visit!
It is a remarkable museum dedicated to the discovery of Otzi in September 1991. He was a Neolithic man found frozen in a glacier in Northern Italy near the border with Austria. You see him resplendent on his bed of ice along with his clothes, tools, weapons and possessions. His discovery put back the copper age by 1000 years as his weapons included a pure copper axe.
Otzi at rest on his frozen bed. Our favourite Iceman!

Modern recreation of Otzi

After some retail therapy and a visit inside the Duomo we went by shuttle out to Castle Roncolo. This is Gail on the long path to the top.. It was an excellent visit with lots of rooms to look at and very old frescoes on the walls.

We went back in the car after collecting it from its overnight garage, picked up our bags and drove to Castelrotto. This is an amazing town that typifies the Tyrolean Dolomites. Politically it is part of Italy but culturally and socially the people think of themselves as German or Austrian or as Tyrolean. German is more common than Italian and some speak a local language. We are looking forward to our time in this part of Italy and enjoying the very different foods and specialities.

The town of Castelrotto.
In the afternoon we went to the village of Ortisei or St Ulrich. All the towns have an Italian and a German name often sounding similar but for others totally different! This is considered by many to be the most beautiful village in the world.

We had dinner before returning to Castelrotto where we had our pre dinner drinks! We do things a little differently at times.

5 comments:

Miss Di said...

You know you're less than two hours drive from Pertisau am Achensee, which mum will be familiar with under its fictional name Briesau am Tiernsee, home of the Chalet School...

Unknown said...

Looking good...glad ur enjoying yourself. Lovely dinner this with Di and Matt. ..will see how it was tomorrow...my first cooking of an end to end roast..sure she will commwnt if I've poisoned them...awesome desert thx to Di compliments to Gail for the cooking of creme brilee...delicuios...em

Miss Di said...

Ha! The recipe book of Google taught me how to make creme brulee - but dad makes a mean individual Bomb Alaska, you should see if he'll make it for you one day (ask mum for a lemon delicious. Just a suggestion...).

gailandrob said...

We had to make do with Tyrolean dumplings

Amanda said...

Don't know how you could have missed the CHalet School!!