Germany Part 2 and Northern Italy-Bolzen & the Dolomites

 After seeing pictures of Bavaria, I wanted to stop in a cute town where we could get a flare of that. We were too far away from famous Bavarian towns, but Landsberg am Lech gave us a taste. We arrived about 6:00am. Early departure from Munich!  We walked around and then stopped at a bakery about 6:30am for breakfast. 

The bakery was amazing and great prices too.  The lady seemed not so happy to serve us American's...oh well. 

On our way! 

Neuschwanstein Castle! We parked at the parking lot and rode the bus up to the drop off. 

At Maria Bridge overlook. This is one of my favorite view points!  So amazing. The clouds kept shifting. 

We then walked over to the castle for a tour. I was just here a couple years ago, but you can't take pictures of the inside of the castle, so I have this memory of it being kind of boring inside. But it was really great inside. Plus there are several parts of the castle not finished, so not much to see. 

On the road again!  Next up, heading to Austria! I wanted to have lunch in the village by Neuschwanstein Castle, but we needed to head out. 

We stopped in Innsbruck for lunch. The first place we went to they were out of food. A tricky part about traveling around Europe is restrooms. They aren't free and readily available like in the USA. The restaurant that was out of food, Lee asked if some of them could still use the bathroom. The person said yes. I went with Cal and Elden to find an ATM as the place next door was open but only accepted cash. I thought I would be fine for awhile, but decided that time ended and needed a bathroom. I found a cafe that was really busy, with people sitting outside. I just walked right in and asked where the toilet was. The person just told me...yay!  Normally the toilets are just for paying customers, but thank you for helping little cafe! We decided not to eat at the place that accepted only cash...not sure why...and then found a kebab place.   

We snagged some gelato again and headed out!  We didn't realize, but we should have hustled more in Innsbruck. 

An olympic run for something. 

So beautiful!

Cal & Elden being troopers!

We made it to Bolzen!  This town is also called Bolzano. It's part of Italy but used to be part of Germany, so it feels very Bavarian there. We walked over to the museum to see Otzi the Iceman. Ugh...we were practically FIVE minutes late and they wouldn't let us in to the exhibit. That was very disappointing. Our next hotel was here at a hostel, so we checked in to that. 

The town is gorgoeous!

See how narrow the trunk is? Clark's shoes don't even fit on the carpet area! So dinky....

After settling in to the hostel (great place by the way!) we walked to a pizza place.

Really yummy!  Not very many people there too. We've restarted the daily gelato ritual. Had to keep it going!

We fasted that weekend, which was great....but the hostel served free breakfast that we missed out on. Oh well. I did check out the breakfast and it wasn't that exciting. We bought some food at Lidl the night before for our dinner and snacks on Sunday.  We packed up from the hostel and headed to church. There is a ward in Bolzen. A member of the 70 was visiting. He was German so an Italian member translated for the members into Italian. We should have used the translation equipment they had, but declined. We tried using Google translate, but it didn't work so well. Afterwards I talked with sister misionaries to ask about what the Elder was saying. He talked about growing up in Eastern Germany and how hard it was for their family. But then talked about the members doing their very best and the joy about getting a temple behind the Berlin Wall.  

The sister in the blue is from Switzerland, the sister in the pink dress is from Utah. I texted her mom about our visit!

Sunday school....

The cool upstairs of the church building. 

Outside The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints!

We had fun meeting a couple from Colorado. They were with one of their adult kids going on a backpacking trip in the area. 

We then took a scenic drive through the Dolomites.  Wow. Just wow! 

We stopped at Lago di Carezza. Really close to the road. You walk through a tunnel to get there. 

Haha, this was our next destination a few hours away! 

We drove a loop through the Dolomites. We thought we'd have to turn around because of the time, but ended up that it was just as fast to stay on the loop. 

Some of us did a little hike out to this view point. For August it was pretty cold!  And muddy!

And snowing!

The towns we drove through were gorgeous. I'd see something to take a picture of, but wouldn't get it quick enough. The pictues I did get don't represent how pretty it is there.  We need to come back!

We drove through the top eastern north of Italy down to the western side by the coast. We paid the expensive tolls to be on their freeway system. Easy driving, but tricky to know what the speed limit was. We searched that if no sign is posted it's 120 kmh, 80 mph. Not bad! 

See the mountains in the photo? Off to the left there is some greenery...and see the small white thing? It's a castle or some fortress on top of a stone outcropping.  A really TALL stone outcropping!  We saw a few of these in Italy. Wow. They build stuff everywhere!

Here's a better look. 

Another fortress. 

Time to break our fast and have dinner!  Thank you Italian motorway for the lovely rest stop and picnic tables! We all picked out random things on Saturday and had a fun meal Sunday. 

A neat tree farm...or something. The trees were planted in too straight of lines!

It's fuzzy, but Barilla Pasta!

I booked this hotel through a restaurant in La Spezia. I was thinking this was some small town, easy to navigate. I was wrong!  It was super busy, tons of traffic...hard to find parking!  Lee dropped most of us off at the restaurant. Someone there walked us to our apartment for the night. I then got in touch with Lee to share our location. He found it. It was in a charming building, cute rooms. 

Ahh, Italy!