Welcome back to “When Wine Calls” as we continue our travels through Northern Italy.
When we were initially planning this adventure, we had not factored in a trip to the Dolomites. However, after meeting a couple who were staying in one of our favourite wineries in Tasmania while we were there and had recently travelled to this part of Northern Italy, we included it in the itinerary after talking to them about it being a must-see destination.
After picking up the hire car we headed off in search of the freeway heading north. Prior to getting onto the freeway we had to negotiate our first toll booth since we had been in Europe which is an exercise in patience, a good navigator and good luck. Firstly, you have to find the toll booth, secondly work out you are only getting a ticket and not paying until further down the road, then work out what road to take from a number of options on the other side and finally have to drive across multiple toll booths in front of other traffic to exit like you are at a start of an F1 Grand Prix.
Anyway, somehow, we negotiated all these obstacles without incident and hit the freeway to discover that the top speed limit was 130kph not that many cars observed that restriction. At least the continual stream of trucks was more orderly, maintaining a lower speed, and keeping in the slow lane unlike what you see these days in Australia.
It was about a two and a half hour drive up to our accommodation at a small village town called Saltaus which was located north of Bolzano (which leads though to Austria and therefore a major gateway through the Italian Alps) and the lovely regional mountain town of Merano. The drive up to Bolzano, while heavy with traffic, was extremely picturesque as you drive through a never-ending valley with towering mountains on each side of the road for most of the journey. What was also interesting was finding so much heavy industry in the valley which I did not expect in such a beautiful landscape.
When we reached Merano the road narrowed considerably into a two-lane winding road on the way through the Alps up to a tiny village of Salthaus. I was concentrating so hard to stay on the road up that I did not appreciate the surrounding spectacular mountain scenery or more notably the scary cliff face I was negotiating although Pauline could in the passenger seat. I certainly discovered the cliff face the next day and then thought I should had let Pauline drive that leg.
Our hotel in Saltaus was Hotel Saltauserhof which was located adjacent to the Cable Car Hirzer bottom station that takes you up into the Italian Alps near the Italian–Austrian border, to the top station at a height of almost 2000 meters. We had picked this hotel as it was a mountain chalet (actually the hotel describes it as an aristocratic manor) and we also wanted to have easy access for walking the many mountain trails located in this area of the Alps.
Saltaus is not a ski resort town and in fact the hotel shuts down for the winter which was a surprise to hear. The area is predominantly for walkers, paragliders, bike riders and campers with two caravan parks located near the fast-flowing river immediately below the hotel. Some guests staying at the hotel were also travellers coming through to Italy from Austria and other parts of Europe.
The most unexpected thing we discovered was that although Salthaus was in Italy, everyone prefers to speak German/Austrian with all the hotel information, tourist brochures, meal menus and signs all in German with no English versions or subtitles. We thought we had done well dealing with the language issues in Italy throughout our trip, but we did not expect to have to negotiate German as well with many of the locals having limited English, similar to our German, so our translation app got a good working out while we were there which proved extremely funny at times – they were, however, very patient with us during our stay.
We got to know many of the restaurant staff at the hotel well during our short stay and they soon understood the Aussie translation for the important items such as our nightly white wine selection (with an ice bucket), sunny side up eggs in the morning, frothy cappuccinos (albeit no chocolate on top) and lastly, of course, our daily aperol request. We even got asked by one of the young girls working in the restaurant to talk to her boyfriend who worked in the bar to persuade him to travel to Australia with her on holidays as he was reluctant to go – not sure how successful we were but it was fun at least trying to get the message across with the language issues.
The day after we arrived, we had planned to drive further up the valley to explore a couple of other villages that we had spotted on the map and discussed these with some of the staff. The immediate response was that there was nothing there and we instead should catch a bus down to Merano which would be far more interesting. We ended up catching the bus which cost only 2 Euro each way and it was on the way down that I realised how scary the road really was that I had driven up the day before. I never drove that road again until it was time to leave but at least I got to see the amazing view from the bus that I had only briefly glimpsed at the previous day.
Merano ended up being a surprise for us, since it was an old spa mountain town not far from the Austrian border but had the fantastic Laubengasse shopping street with all the global labels represented set in the valley with a backdrop of the alps rising on all sides. Pauline was ecstatic as she strolled through the mall, I was just taken by the architecture of the buildings and the magnificent views.
We had read that you could catch the chairlift Meran-Dorf Tirol up to the village of Tirolo (at a height of 594m) and walk to the Castle Tyrol (from which the whole Tyrol region got its name) so we headed in that direction. The chairlift turned out to be a single person open chair style dating back to the 1940’s that climbed the mountain totally exposed to the elements.
We individually hopped into our single seat and hoped it wouldn’t break down on the way up as the safety features did not appear to be that strong although it had been refurbished back in the mid 80’s we subsequently discovered.
The bigger issue was about halfway up when Pauline’s seat starting swaying sideways in the wind just as I was trying to get her to turn around for a photo opportunity – as they say timing is everything.
When we arrived at the top station, we were surprised to find upmarket hotels and chalets with unbelievable views overlooking the valley below and with snow still on the mountain tops in the distance. We also noted a road that you could drive up from Merano rather than catch the chairlift with the town serviced by a bus route – that may have been a better option in hindsight we thought to ourseleves.
Interestingly, there were apple orchards on the mountain with hanging fruit on trees that were very different to what we have seen in Australia. The other surprise was that the walk to the village ended up being a 45 minute walk all uphill.
We gave up on visiting Castle Tyrol which we could see in the distance and took a photo instead and looked around the quaint shops in the village such as the local wine shop and Beirgarten which I certainly enjoyed better than the retail shops down in Merano.
We successfuly hit our step count that day and were happy that we had made the effort for the amazing view but we ended up with some slightly sore muscles from the adventure.
On our return to Merano we made straight for Signorvino,a wine store and restaurant in Laubengasse Street that we had noticed earlier in the day for a late lunch and a recovery wine prior to heading back to Saltaus – the staff there wear these amazing T-shirts which we loved and will get something similar made-up for ouselves when we get back to Oz.
Over the next two days we caught the Cable Car Hirzer up to the top station at nearly 2000 metres so we could walk some of the trails in the Alps.
To say the views were nothing short of magnificent and just simply “wow, wow, wow” would be an understatement with the pictures again not doing jstice at all to the experience. The trails had cows wandering over the hillside with old fashioned large cow bells sounding on their every movement.
On each of the days we went hiking we came across mountain huts serving food and drinks at this ridiculous altitude allowing you to just sit on the mountain face and soak up the amazing view with the towering Mt Hirzer (2,781 m) and surrounding mountains all around with Saltaus, Merano and other villages in the valley below and snow covered mountains backgrounding them.
The realisation that there were tracks allowing you to walk to the top of these mountains and down the other side into Austria was difficult to comprehend compared to Australia and certainly brought back memories of the final scenes of the movie, Sound of Music.
I couldn’t resist myself in this setting to sing a few verses of the theme song including ‘the hills are alive……” not that Pauline appreciated the effort.
to walk down from the Hirzer top station to the village of Prenn (1404m) and catch the cable car from the miiddle station. While the track surface (more a dirt one lane road) was relatively easy it consisted of continual hair pin bends as it wound its way down the mountain which put a lot of strain on the calves due to the steep terrain. While we got down without issue the next week was certainly not one without feeling the effort.
We had thoroughly enjoyed our time in the Dolomites which was in such stark contrast to our other travels throughout Italy and showed us another side to this amazing country. While most tourists stick to the main tourist trail when visiting this country there is so much more worth seeing off track and we were so thankful for running into those people in Tasmania that persuaded us to visit this region.
The next day we took the hairy drive back down to Merano and headed back to Verona. We had planned to turn off the motorway at Bolzano and head over the mountain range to Lake Garda for a look. However, with the weather deteriorating and a warning light coming up on the car dashboard alerting to low tyre pressure on one of the tyres we decided to skip the detour and head straight to our hotel at Verona Airport which we thankfully reached without any major issues.
We had booked Hotel Veronesi La Torre at Verona Airport and based on our previous experiences at airport hotels we did not have high expectations, but the hotel was located close to the airport, and we had an early flight the next day, so it was convenient. What we experienced was something else again. The hotel was a restored 16th century monastery, and the staff were just brilliant and accommodating.
The hotel had a restaurant Ristorante La Torre 22 that had seating outside in this huge central courtyard with candlelit tables dressed in white tablecloths – the food, wine and service for dinner was as good as any notable restaurant. We had a totally unexpected and enjoyable evening which really bookended our wonderful time travelling Italy.
The next morning when we went to check out the reception staff unexpectedly presented us with two brekky packs that they had prepared for us to take to the airport and made coffees while we waited for the hotel transfer bus to arrive – you could not ask more of a hotel let alone one located near an airport.
We have had such a fabulous time travelling through previously unseen parts of Northern Italy but it was reluctantly time to move onto our last leg of our amazing adventure and so we boarded the plane bound for France. Join us in our next blog as we travel through the French countryside on route to our final departure point at CDG (Charles de Gaulle) Airport – until then.
Bruce and Pauline
When Wine Calls 
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