On December 16th I walked from my hotel to the Trento train station. I passed this nice carved nativity on the way.
I took the 40 minute train ride to my next destination, Bolzano. Again, not the most well known location in Italy, so I included a map. It's about halfway between Verona and Innsbruck, Austria. This is an interesting area of Italy because everything is in Italian and German. Even the town names, which is why you see Bolzano and Bozen on the map.
I arrived around noon and was able to check into my hotel. I went straight to the nearby Christmas market and was able to find a bratwurst for lunch.
The market and cathedral
I had walked by a grocery between my hotel and the market, so I decided to go do some grocery shopping. I like going in grocery stores during my travels, but also I was going to be in Bolzano for 3 nights, so it made sense to load up on some drinks and room snacks.
Having not had much but a pretzel and gelato the day before, yogurt sounded good, so I got this container and ate on it all 3 days.
These were great and I ate these the whole trip and finished them off the morning I left for the airport to go home.
Lindt (and all chocolates really) are just so much better in Europe than what we get in the U.S.
I went back out and stopped in the cathedral this time.
I walked to some other markets and passed by this park with cute decor.
I found another grocery and bought some produce. I think I ended up visiting here each day. I was eating clementines like I was trying to ward off scurvy or something!
But seriously, there is just a lot of speck, bread, and potato options everywhere as demonstrated in this video...
After wandering around Bolzano for a while, I went back to the train station and took another train to Merano or Meran. Bolzano was going to be my base for the next three days, but I had plans to visit Vipiteno, Brixen, Merano, and Ortisei which are all shown on this map.
I arrived in Merano and realized the train station was a bit away from the market area, so I hopped in a taxi. I had been on the fence about whether to go out to Merano and boy am I glad I went!
I found it all so charming! The market by the river, all their twinkling lights, the mountains as a backdrop...
But they like speck too and all the booths I was seeing only offered speck.
I thought I was going to have to skip dinner at the market because I was NOT getting anymore speck, but then I found this burger place and I was so happy! A couple of things to note about this sign: (1) notice it's in German and Italian, which as I noted is common in this area; (2) it isn't translated into English. This was actually the third day of my trip where I didn't hear anyone speaking English. Americans are LOUDER than everyone else, so you hear them if they are around. I also didn't find as many people to speak English in this area as I have in other places like Florence or Rome; (3) the burger still had speck! But I told the guy "no speck" like 5 times!
This guy made my burger from scratch. I might have been drooling over those veggies as I hadn't seen any in days!
This is a spa town and this was one of the public spas.
This tree was just so pretty!
Again, I was so happy I didn't skip the trip to Merano. I was thoroughly charmed!
I took a taxi back to the train station and a train back to Bolzano and made a quick run through this market to see it lit up at night.
I chose to stay at the Parkhotel Laurin in Bolzano. It's a very grand old hotel with a restaurant, wood paneled bar, pool (it was even heated), spa, etc. I chose it because the room appeared to be large and the location was great. I had two hotels booked for a long while and I walked by the other one and think it might have been newer and shinier, but the location of Parkhotel was so much better. Since I was going to be traveling by bus and train so much, it was perfectly situated just a block from those stations. It also was a 3 minute or less walk from the cathedral, the main Christmas market, restaurants, etc.
My room was right there in the center on the 3rd floor above the flags.
I didn't take a picture, but it had a nice entry with a closet, hooks on the wall, minibar, etc.
The one negative I have is that they had the worst toilet paper I have ever encountered in my entire life. I think it was recycled because the hotel is a on a "green kick". If I had it to do over, I would have purchased some at the grocery on day one because this was truly terrible.
A lot of windows
That's it for day one of my stay in Bolzano. Stay tuned for what came next (spoiler, it was amazing)...
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