Vacation in the Dolomites!

Cortina

We saw so many beautiful sights and mountains on our trip, but we both felt that the Dolomites in Italy were the favorite part of our trip. And I think you'll agree that's saying a lot, if you've been following along to see where we have been.

From Wengen Switzerland we made our way to Cortina Italy. A long day of travel saw us take a train first to Milan and then on to Treviso ("the hidden Venice"), where we stayed for the night before continuing on to Cortina d'Ampezzo by bus the next day. Cortina (which is a little like Aspen on steroids) is a beautiful little town set in a valley close to the Austrian border and surrounded on all sides by the Dolomite mountains. We chose Cortina because there is a really nice 7-day circular hike that starts and ends in Cortina, so it made the logistics quite easy.

Also - teaser alert: we had our first big celebrity sighting in Cortina!

Before we get to the amazing pictures of the hiking, I need to describe the fun we had on the Sunday that we arrived. As per usual, no detailed planning had been done by yours truly in advance of our arrival as far as "what to do in Cortina", so Susan went into full-on research mode during our bus trip into town and found, amazingly, that the biggest event of the year was actually happening the day we were arriving! Every year, the last week of September, Cortina has a big music festival where brass bands from all of the surrounding villages and towns come to play, culminating in a big parade and celebration on Sunday - the day of our arrival.

So immediately upon arriving we dumped our bags at the hotel and raced down to see the parade.

We stayed the night in this neat little hotel right in the center of town, before beginning our hike

Our first celebrity sighting!

As we were walking back to our hotel from the parade we passed by a semi-familiar figure lounging outside a baby store. It only took a second to realize it was Justin Timberlake -- mainly because he dressed so JT-ish, with a scally cap and rather loud plaid pants. He was clearly not trying to be incognito. We could see that Jessica Biel (his wife) was inside the store shopping and JT was waiting outside, chatting with an older local, while his bodyguard kept his distance across the street. After a brief discussion about whether we should hang around and be gawkers, we decided to play it cool and and walk on.

The hike

The next day we started on our hike. The hike was beautiful, and fairly challenging. I think the first day we covered 24 kilometers, with a lot of elevation. The pictures will mainly speak for themselves, but there are so many beautiful places to show you they will be spread over a couple of blog posts.