At one point we had entertained ideas about trying to get up very early on Friday morning to try to do one of the "Via Ferrata" hikes in the Corvara area, but we were so tired on Thursday night after our 19 kilometer "hike out" from Rifugio Dibona that we never got organized (the bus arrived a bit late, and we would have had to rush into town to rent the climbing harnesses)... this seemed like too much of a hassle, so we opted to do Friday on a somewhat more relaxed schedule. We got up at a reasonable hour, had breakfast (more conversations with the Brits), got packed up, and then drove our way over to the city of Bolzano to visit the archeological museum, which was fun. Parking was a bit of challenge, but we did eventually find a lot with a free space, then walked into the city center to see the museum.
The chief attraction of the museum is that it houses "Ötzi" the ice man, the mummy discovered emerging from a melting glacier back in 1991. As it turns out, just about everything in the museum is about him (there really weren't any other exhibits to speak of). Still, there is some really astonishing stuff that they had there, including all of the various tools and kit that he was carrying (knife, bow, axe, backpack, etc) as well as exhaustive analysis of his body, etc (using DNA, carbon dating etc). It was definitely a huge discovery-- a game changer in many ways when it came to the "copper age" neolithic humans.
We had lunch at a cool restaurant called "ZenZero" -- weird mix between Asian dishes (Pad thai noodles), Mediterranean food, and foccaccia, but very tasty. From then it was back into the car and onto the autostrada to complete the journey up to Mittenwald.
We arrived around 4:30ish I think? After the comparatively non-existent wifi in Pension Angelo the kids were desperate to reconnect digitally, so Amy and I went for a walk on our own to scope things out. Fair number of pedestrians out and about in the main drag... it was a lively scene. We visited the tourist info center, looked for grocery stores + bakeries, and headed down to the train station to check out the bike rental place.
Mittenwald has a sort of old-fashioned feel to it, a bit more sleepy than the places we've been to so far. The hotel had the same feel -- slightly dim, cavernous lobby, sizeable rooms with space to stretch out and nice small balconies with a couple of chairs in which to sit while reading.
We had dinner at the hotel restaurant. I had the pan-fried trout, which turned out to be very good -- possibly the best piece of trout I have had in many years (very fresh, seasoned well, and perfectly cooked). The salad and potatoes were quite tasty as well.
Central square, main church:
Saturday:
After breakfast we decided to rent bikes and ride out to one of the nearby lakes, which (we were told) offered swimming possibilities. Getting set up with the bikes proved fairly straightforward, but once we got going it became immedaitely apparent that the bike map (which we'd purchased for 3 euros at the tourist center) was completely inadequate... not enough detail. We did manage to muddle our way along, however, and after bunch of fits and starts we wound up at a small lake ("Barmsee") north of Mittenwald. More or less by accident we found a swimming area off to the side (not really marked) and paid our 3 euros to get in -- it turned out to be a really nice place to swim.
Water was cool but not freezing. It reminded me a little of the place that we go to swim in Wallingford VT, near where my mom lives-- lots of "locals", families with little kids, etc.
After our swim we fortitied ourselves with ice cream, then cycled over to a nearby town ("Krais") in search of lunch. There was just a single cafe there, so we settled in and ordered some food.
Amy had sausage with potato salad, I had a weird bowl of soup that looked like meat broth with strips of cut up pancakes (can't recall the name), and the kids ordered "large schnitzel salads", which turned out to be enormous (they weren't kidding about the 'large' part):
Amazingly, Ethan was able to eat the entire thing (Lydia got close but didn't quite polish hers off). On the road biking back to Mittenwald:
After a short break to rest, we walked down to the "Geigenbau" (violin-making) museum here in town. It was interesting-- Mittenwald apparently has a long history of violin-making. Although most of the major signage was done in both German and English, but there were still a lot of exhibits that had German signs without any English translations, grumble (there was a big one in the middle that was showing the various compounds they put into the varnish that I wish they'd had translations for, but no dice-- oh well). Even so, it was still an interesting visit.
Viola di Amoro (sp?):
One of the many painted storefronts/housefronts in town -- this was very common to see:
We visited the grocery store ("REWE") after that to stock up on water, fruit, chocolate, etc. Nice place (inexpensive to boot).
After that we biked over to the train station to return our bikes. The owners were long gone (they had left around noon), but they gave us instructions to lock our bikes to a specific railing, which we did. After locking up you are supposed to deposit the keys in this contraption (interesting!) that funnels them down into a plastic basin:
Relaxing on the balcony:
View from the balcony to the southwest -- nice sunset:
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