You Go Nate!: April (and May) Alpine Adventures - Part 6: May Day in Pinocchio Country

May 1st:

We woke up in Bolzano to the sound of drums and trumpets outside our hotel window. We took a look onto the street to see a modest procession of Italians marching through the street in celebration of the May 1 holiday.

It was an interesting way to wake up...

It was still quite early, and the others wanted to sleep in a bit more. I was pretty well awake by this point and so I decided to go out and have another quick look at the city.

So I took my camera and explored Bolzano a bit...

The main square in this city is named after Walter von der Vogelweide, a famous German minstrel (minnesinger) in the late middle ages who was from the region of Tyrol, and spent some time in Bolzano. I remember learning about Walter von der Vogelweide in Music History because his name is really fun to say fast (remember, the German "w" is an English "v" and the German "v" is an English "f")...

There was also a big flower market going on at the time and so they were setting up for that as well...

The church had a cool roof...

I got back to the hotel to find the others still asleep, and so I woke them up and we had breakfast, cleaned up, and then loaded up in the car to our next destination.

We drove further into the mountains into a unique region of the Alps called the "Dolomites."

Our first stop was lake Carrezza. We found a Lamborghini in the parking lot...

We came around to the lake, which was rather small actually. But the view of the Dolomites above it were impressive...

We hiked around the lake, and through a bit of snow...

Here's an interesting tree that looks like it picked up it's roots and moved around just like an octopus...

It was nice...

We drove on a bit more and then found a little trail to hike...

After our hike we drove on to a pass in the mountains and there, with a great view, we ate our picnic lunch...

We drove on through some spectacular mountain scenery. Most of it was difficult to photograph from the car, given the light, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

We did stop at a few nice outlooks, however...

We came across a large dam which we drove across. It felt like that scene in the Italian Job...

The lake above was still frozen...

From that pass we drove down into some beautiful Tyrolean valleys. This is supposedly the area where Disney's Pinocchio takes place. Pinocchio and Gepetto wear Tyrolean traditional clothing (but their names are Italian) and they're not too far from the sea. It was a beautiful area I would love to visit again.

We were running short on time however since we wanted to be in Ljubljana before it got too late that night. So we drove through the Dolomites and then into the lowlands above Venice. From there we finally crossed into Slovenia and got to Ljubljana at sundown.

In Ljubljana we walked around a bit in the old town...

I've still yet to see Ljubljana in the daytime...

The next day was Sunday and we went to church at the relatively new meetinghouse in Ljubljana. It was a nice big new building and the meetings were very nice.

I said goodbye to Matjaž and Lala and Peter and I rode with his family to the town of Bled (where I had spent a week last year). It was fun seeing their family again and Peter's 13-year-old brother, Urban, beat me in Chess. We had lunch and the Peter and his dad took me to the train station where I caught the train back to Munich.

Though it had been a rather cloudy day in Slovenia, as the train passed into Austria the sun came out and made for a gorgeous train ride through the Carinthian Alps...