The Dolomites Might Be Our Fav
Travel Tips for the Dolomites
The Dolomites cover a massive area that you won’t have time to properly explore in a week.
The western side in the Province of Bolzano has a fantastic bus system that takes you almost anywhere if you want to avoid renting a car. Ask your hotel because a bus pass is free when staying in the area.
Reserve a room with a stove, kettle, microwave, or ideally all three. Food can be expensive in the small mountain towns unless you make it yourself.
Most towns, including where we stayed, have at least two names - one in German and one in Italian. For example, Urtijëi, Sankt Ulrich, and Ortisei are all the same town! Be prepared to use names interchangeably thanks to the blending of culture in this area!
The famous photography locations on the Bolzano side look better at sunset and will be incredibly over crowded if you don’t arrive early.
Our Dolomite Travels
We have wanted to visit the Dolomites for years! It was actually the hardest area to plan for our European travels being so enormous and dispersed. Do we need a rental car? Why does everything have two names? Wait, can we even physically hike up that thing without gear?! We pretty much knew nothing before arriving other than a bus system existed so we opted out of a rental car to save money. It turned out to be one of the most beautiful weeks we spent in Europe.
Most of our Dolomite travel was planned while looking at Google Maps in Munich. We saw the Dolomites as being two main areas. The western half in Bolzano had more mountain towns and could be visited without a car. This would save us a ton of money but be a lot slower to navigate. The eastern half in Veneto was more rugged and required mountain hut reservations plus a car to reach trailheads. While it was the more naturally beautiful side, getting hut reservations and a car so last minute was nearly impossible. We chose to focus on the western side instead of trying to thinly cover both. From the town of Ortisei we would travel to the gorgeous mountain churches around the Dolomites. That journey started with a FlixBus ride from Munich to the Dolomites to get as close to Ortisei as possible. From our FlixBus stop we were dependent on local mountain buses to ship us up into the mountains for the remaining dozen kilometers. Riding a bus in the Dolomites felt like riding a train in Switzerland. You’re constantly bewildered by the landscape and fresh mountain air. The only major difference being that once you arrive to town the air is slightly pizza scented. Our check in location was unexpectedly across town from the home we rented. One other bus ride across town and a twenty minute walk uphill finally got us home. The rental home was waaaaay above town so the view from its patio shown on the left made the daily trek up worthwhile. That patio became my first Dolomite photo location and the only easy one to access. The other locations mostly required navigating three buses to reach.
Here are my images and the stores behind them.
Chandni was not feeling well on our first day back in Italy. She went to bed very early while I took a janky van ride (supposedly a bus) higher into the mountains above our home to reach San Giacomo. Despite soaring up nearly 1,000 feet by “bus”, I had a couple of hundred more left on foot. I didn’t expect much of a sky based on the thick clouds but I was hoping for a break. Once I reached the church and caught my breath, I spoke to an Italian photographer who shared my worries. He and everyone else left before sunset. A photographic nightmare came true as I was setting up: I had forgotten to bring the right lens! I literally could not shoot how I wanted. I was stuck doing a panorama while hoping for cloud color. And that color decided to magically scream across the sky!
Sunset broke through and bled over the high level clouds. It became an Italian aurora borealis, and I was lucky enough to be the only photographer capturing it. That was easily one of the greatest sunsets I’ve ever seen.
The next sunset wasn’t quite the same show stopper, but it was spectacular in its own right. We took three buses and a twenty minute walk each way to reach a view point over Santa Magdalena. It was the only sunset guaranteed to have vibrant lighting as proven by the herd of photographers waiting. There must have been sixty or more people with a camera. Among them was famous YouTuber Jason Vong! I’ve seen plenty of his videos so Chandni encouraged me to go say hi. It took me a while to muster up the courage, but introduced myself I did! I immediately messed up his name and called him James… He quickly corrected me. You know those moments you remember years later that are embarrassing to you but that nobody else remembers? That’s now one of mine.
Anyways, the photo! We watched the sunset of beautiful golden light drown the landscape for over an hour. I couldn’t ask for better light, but I could have asked for clouds. Still, it’s a photo I’m happy with covering a view we’ll never forget.
Sunset number three sent us straight back to Santa Magdalena to photograph probably the most famous church in the Dolomites – San Giovanni. This is the church view you’ll mostly find on postcards of the area. That made it a generic, but essential photograph to capture. I was hoping to explore and be slightly creative but not after seeing what we discovered on arrival. The field in front of the church is all above the main road and circled by a thick wooden fence. You can’t see this view from a public space. Except one. There’s a small viewing platform on the field up some stairs from the road. Every photograph you see of this church, including mine, are probably taken from this platform. Realizing the creative limitation made me less excited, as did the lack of clouds or atmosphere. While not a snazzy image, the view was easily top notch.
The last sunset was spent at San Valentin. Again, it took multiple busses and a walk uphill to reach the church. One of those busses was one Miss Frizzle away from being the magic school bus because it was filled with energetic 1st graders!
Someone at Google decided to post a public school bus route on Maps. We were the only adults on the bus besides the driver so imagine our confusion when it rolled up. But hey, we made it up the mountain and over to the church! A small dairy farm neighbors San Valentin so the smell was exactly as you imagine. Also photographing the church was a photographer from New York named John who had already chosen the best vantage point. I was lucky that he offered to let me setup right next to him. He and his wife were very kind. Unfortunately the clouds weren’t. They had been missing in my two previous sunsets so they all decided to crowd this one. We barely managed to see the upper areas of the mountain before it occluded.
This time we didn’t have the benefit of staying longer thanks to the bus schedule. We had to jog down to our bus which we thankfully caught. Stressing about being left on a mountain is no fun at all. Taking long bus rides home after sunset really made eating dinner a drag since it happened so late every day.
Outside photography we loved our Dolomite days! We had cocktails and took naps on top of the mountains. So much gelato was eaten. We even made a frozen pizza in our microwave and stove top because we didn’t realize an oven was missing from our kitchen. Every Italian must have just shuddered as I wrote that. The western Dolomites are very accessible without a car as long as you don’t mind compromising on speed. Slow travel is budget travel, and budget travel lets you travel longer. We’ll return to the Dolomites to visit the eastern half at some point. Before then, we have many other spectacular mountain ranges to explore!
