And waiting for us, because we had to pick up a van at the Venice airport and drive to the Dolomites. Also, this time it wasn’t just us; we had some friends, too! Aka our cuzins.

Saylor, our cousin on the far left, who was traveling with just her mom because her dad had to take care of her little brother Soren back in San Jose, was staying at our hotel. Dean and Emmy, the two other ones who aren’t me, Mia, or Saylor, were staying at a different hotel nearby.

The first day we went on a hike called the Woody Walk, and there were all sorts of cool wooden playgrounds like a wooden slide, a wooden boat thing, and ball races. We ate lunch at a refugio (a refugio is like a little hotel on a mountain that usually has a restaurant, too) at the top, called Rossalm, where there were trampolines and this raft contraption where you have to pull yourself along to get to the other side. It was cool.

For the next two days, we went hiking around a town called Ortisei. For every single hike we took, we needed to go up the mountain partially by chairlift, and the hikes were at the top. The first hike we went to was Seceda. It was a short 10 min hike that probably took our big group of 10, 20, or 30 minutes, and then we went to Alpe di Suisi (this is the Italian name, but it has another name, Seiser Alm, which is the German name). At Alpe di Suisi, we hiked to another little refugio. While we were there, it was raining so much that it started to flood and fill people’s cups with water. After, we hiked down, frolicked for a little, and then tried rolling down the hill, but it was too itchy. We decided on just running down the hill, which was extremely scary. We took the ski chairlift back up, and even though we go skiing in Tahoe every winter, this was my first time riding one without skis or snow! When we got back to Ortisei that afternoon, we had some reaaaly delicious lemon gelato. The gelato tasted like someone had frozen some lemonade and then mashed it up into ice cream.

While in Ortisei, we also went to an adventure park, where we did basically parkour up in the trees. It was the best, especially at the end when we took a Fly Line down to the bottom. The Fly Line is this zipliny thing that goes through the trees, but it goes slower than a zipline. You can lean back and go backwards! My fave part was the part that swirls in a circle! Then we went into the town to grab yet another yummy lemon gelato. We then ate dinner at a fancy restaurant. My sister and the rest of our cousins ate linguini, but the adults and I had four courses of smoked eel, truffle pasta, veal cheek, and a really good apple turnover for dessert.

After those days, we went hiking at Tre Cime, or “three chimneys.” It looked like a really, really, really foggy version of the Grand Canyon, and it was spookier than Transylvania! Clouds kept coming and going, and when the clouds cleared, you had a few minutes to take pics before the clouds came again.

On the last day in the Dolomites, we went to a mountain called Rittner Horn, where we went on a hike that was like the Woody Walk, but not all wood. The best thing was this pole with seats on ropes attached to it. One of the dads would push one of the kids, and it spun around and around really fast. For dinner, we took a train, then a gondola to Bolzano, where we ate more gelato and Italian/German food. My saddest moment in that town was when my mom told me that a flying tiger was opening there in September! We missed it by like 1 month!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 😭