A Summer Road Trip Through the Italian Alps

Jun 30

After two long years without international travel, my friends Neco, Zack and I finally got to cross off a long-awaited trip off of our bucket list. We spent a week road-tripping through the Italian alps; hiking mountains, learning the language, shooting film, and drinking entirely too many aperol spritzes. Here are some of the highlights.

We spent our first two days in Venice, hoping that the bustling city would help us add a few new words to our Italian vocabulary before heading off to towns where we knew English-speakers would be few and far between. We spent most of this time in the neighborhood where our AirBNB was located — a rare, quiet corner of Venice where we found cool thrift shops and old restaurants hidden behind centuries-old churches.

From Venice, we rented a car and started driving towards the alps, stopping first at the famous Tre Cime where we hiked five miles without a meal, snacks, or water after finding out the refugio was closed for the day.

We spent the next couple of nights at one of the many tiny inns in Ortisei, a small town in the alps. From here, we were able to drive easily to some of the more popular spots in the Dolomites including Chiesa di Santa Maddalena and Alpe di Suisi.

Our favorite, however, was the Seceda mountain range — easily our best day on this trip. After taking the cable car to the top, we hiked down to Baita Sofie Hütte (a restaurant that sits just on the side of the mountain) for lunch. We sat there for a long while, talking through our highs and lows from the last few days, then made the mistake of drinking a beer (aperol for me) before having to make the difficult trek back up.

The next day, we stopped at Lake Garda for the afternoon. We spent a few hours sitting by the beach, eating (amazing!!!) pizza and walking through the narrow streets of the town.

That evening, we drove down to Verona and made it just in time to watch the sunset at Ponte Piedra. We quickly learned that the city was a hot spot for Italian bachelorette parties where, apparently, it’s tradition to raft down the river.

On a normal day, we probably would have avoided any restaurant in a tourist hot spot but Neco spotted a Michelin star just around the corner from the bridge and we decided to give it a try. Every table overlooking the water was reserved that night, so we were taken downstairs to a corner table in the wine cellar. While we didn’t get to watch the sunset with dinner, sitting in the (let’s just call it what it is) basement gave us an excuse to be the loud Americans we were without remorse, and it was the best dinner we had during our trip.

On our last day, we drove back to Venice and drank one last cup of espresso at the world’s oldest coffee shop (no, I’m serious, look it up) before hobbling through the city with all of Zack’s bags to get him to his train on time. A perfectly fitting ending to this beautiful, chaotic trip.

I love these boys with my whole heart. Can’t wait to see where we go next.