Dolomites (Brixen), 2026
From Tenno, we drove northeast towards the majestic Dolomiti of Südtirol, where German is the predominant language of the area. Prior to this trip, Nick knew a little Italian, but decided to cram in as much Duolingo as possible as well. However, he didn’t re-study German, which would have been a little more helpful for this part of the trip, as German was the first language on everything. Still, it didn’t really matter since they all knew Italian, and were also fluent in English, putting us monolinguals to shame…
Before going to our hotel, we decided to spend the afternoon in Brixen, the largest town in the immediate area that we’d be staying in. The heatwave was in full effect by this point, so I think the temperature was over 90 degrees. We also went there on Whit Monday, which some Italians observe as a holiday, so many of the stores in Brixen were closed. That didn’t stop us from walking around and appreciating the architecture of the homes and buildings in the town:
Unfortunately, the bright exteriors of the homes reflected the hot sun, making walking around a bit more uncomfortable. We noticed that the Cathedral of Brixen was nearby, so we headed over there and were pleasantly surprised by how much cooler it was inside. We decided to spend some time here admiring the architecture and art, as well as the ornate organ sitting above the main area:
From here, we headed over to Hofburg Brixen, a castle that was the home of the bishops of the diocese until the early 1800s. We weren't really sure what there was to see here, but it was nearby and out of the sun, so we bought our tickets and proceeded inside. The first few rooms were many displays of various dioramas depicting scenes from the bible:
Some of the dioramas were quite graphic, such as the massacre of the innocents. Despite the rather gruesome subject matter, we were impressed with the amount of detail in the figures.
From there, we were able to walk outside to the central courtyard:
Despite it being 90+ degrees outside, we still enjoyed the architecture of the central building and the minimalist courtyard.
We continued back inside, where with your admission, you could go and view the various rooms of the castle. Nick particularly enjoyed this room, which displayed various coats of arms:
This led to us discussing what our coat of arms would be if we had one. I don’t think we ever came to a consensus, but for sure, there’d be a panda somewhere.
I don’t know if there was a theme to the displays in each room, but there were a lot of religious items, which makes sense given that the old bishops resided here. The design of some of the rooms were quite beautiful, with the painted frescos and ornate furniture:
But the most decorated room was the court church:
At this point, it was late enough that we could check into our hotel, which was only about 10 minutes away. The place is called My Arbor, and as its name indicates, trees are a large part of the decor and design. Even the hotel itself looks like a cool, but very large, treehouse:
We opted for the half-board option, meaning that both breakfast and dinner was included. Because it was the late afternoon when we checked-in, we decided to hang out in the hotel for the rest of the day. The view from our dinner table was gorgeous:
Dinner this night was strange though, but that was mainly because our server was not the most pleasant with us. When the entrees came to our table, we immediately noticed that Nick’s dish was the wrong menu item, so we told the server (a different person from our main server) that Nick ordered something else. She didn’t really apologize, and instead pointed out that the silverware on Nick’s side of the table was correct for the dish that she had in her hand, and that the knife was incorrect for the dish that Nick actually ordered. It was a very strange reaction to being told that she had the wrong item, but she took the dish away and on the way back to the kitchen, told our server that this was the wrong dish. From that point on to when we left the restaurant, he was extremely cold to us, and never apologized for his mistake or even acknowledged it. We didn’t bring it up with him since he seemed extremely frustrated with us, as if it was Nick’s fault for the error. It was a shame too because the food was very good, but we were hoping that we wouldn’t have the same server for tomorrow’s dinner (spoiler: we didn’t :)).
Plose Mountain
The main reason we decided to come to Südtirol, and specifically My Arbor, was because we could go up and hike part of the Dolomiti. A 10 minute walk away from the hotel is the entrance to the Plose gondola, which would take us up to the top of Plose Mountain. While still part of the Dolomiti, this is not the same area as the more popular Seceda Mountain. There weren’t really any signs to the gondola though, and the verbal instructions we were given earlier didn’t really make it clear where to go, but we eventually figured it out:
Before booking the hotel, we made sure that the gondola would be open (it opened a couple of days before we arrived). But even if the gondola wasn’t open, there was a trail to walk up the mountain, but we weren’t going to do that in 90 degree weather. The gondola was pretty fast for how much elevation it needed to gain (3200 feet) in order to get to the top. Much like Mount Baldo, there was also a mid-station stop, but you didn’t need to get off and change cars here, so that was nice:
Soon we were at the top and greeted with the massive Plose sign:
But even more impressive were the Dolomiti in the background:
There were many trails that you could take up here that offered various distances and difficulties. We didn’t really have a plan at first, so we continued walking away from the gondola and saw signs for the first restaurant on the trail, so we headed over there and admired the view along the way:
Like Mount Baldo, these trails were nice and wide and generally flat, with various restaurants spaced out along the way. We stopped for a coffee at the first restaurant and refilled our water bottle before deciding to ascend Plose Mountain to a higher viewing point. The trail here was much smaller and full of rocks, but it still wasn’t too bad. As we climbed up the mountain, we started to see snow on the ground:
I think it was in the high 60s at this elevation, so it was surprising to us to still see snow in late May. Along the trail up to the top, we admired more of the view of the mountains as well as the wildflowers and butterflies:
Eventually we made it to the top and were able to see the other side of the ridge:
We enjoyed a quick lunch of goulash and dumplings at the nearby restaurant:
And soon, the inevitable descent began. We followed the sign from the top that pointed to the gondola at the bottom, but we couldn’t discern a trail to follow. It basically pointed us to a large, grassy hill that in the winter would be a large ski slope. We decided to trust it and slowly walked down the field and eventually saw a fence that had the trail on the other side of it, so we were relieved that we were on the right path. From here to the gondola, we enjoyed the last views of the Dolomiti:
But before we took the gondola down to the hotel, we needed to go on the Plosebob, a mountain coaster located by the gondola. We had only been on one mountain coaster in the past in Leavenworth, and we enjoyed it, so we decided to try another one, and oooooh boy was it a ride. First of all, once we got in line, we discovered that there was a technical issue preventing the attendant from loading and unloading the cars. It took about 10 minutes of waiting before the system was functional again, so we got into our respective ‘bobsled’ and waited for our ride to start:
Unlike the Leavenworth coaster, the Plosebob started partially up the mountain, so the start is essentially going down to the bottom and then being pulled up above the loading station, and then riding back down. What this really meant was that once you start moving down the track to leave the tunnel, you’re propelled down the track and immediately into the first curve. Both Nick and I rode the brakes on that first curve because it was so fast (much faster than Leavenworth), and hit some of the brakes on some of the other turns. I was behind Nick, and I thought I was going fairly slowly, but then I looked behind me and couldn’t find the next bobsled, so I guess I went faster than them. Despite the terrifying beginning, it was still tons of fun, although the AI generated finish line photo was quite disturbring:
Once we returned to the hotel, we stopped by the bar for a drink and cake:
The sachertorte here was actually better than the one we had in Salzburg.
We then chilled out at the pool and then had a much more enjoyable dinner because our server the previous night wasn’t there, and the one we had instead was much more pleasant. I don’t have the menu for that evening’s dinner, but here are some of the dishes:
And with that, we had to repack our suitcases again to prepare for our drive to our last destination on this trip: Bologna.