5 Cities in 3 Days

It's 12 PM (or as they say here, 24:00) and I find myself packing my absolutely huge backpack in preparation for another weekend in another country. I really don't know how I'm going to go back to normal life after doing this every weekend here...

Last Friday my study abroad group had the option to go on a weekend trip planned by our directors. Not wanting to miss the opportunity to stay in a hotel instead of a hostel and also go on a weekend trip which was completely planned by someone else and required no responsibility on my end, I decided to go and my friends chose to attend as well.

First stop, Trento
Okay so you might remember that I have already been to this city, completely by accident. For this reason, it wasn't of great significance to my friends and I though I came to appreciate our accidental trip because our group never went up the mountain or the gondola. We did have a new adventure, however, when we explored Buonconsiglio Castle.

View of the city from Buonconsiglio Castle.

Beautiful gardens, great view and lovely frescos. Castles are pretty hard to go wrong with. We also had free-time for lunch and my friends and we chose to grab pizza (one for each of us, of course) and wine in the city center where the sun was out and we could people watch. I've noticed a lot of people commenting on how good the food looks so I'm going to be sure to include tidbits about what I'm eating because I have honest to god not had a bad meal since I've been here. This meal was margherita pizza (what we would refer to as "cheese pizza") and house white wine.

Pizzas are typically eaten as a personal dish. I like to cut mine in fourths so when I say I ate four pieces, it sounds a bit more reasonable.

Next, Merano
I had never heard of Merano in my life and it is absolutely such an underrated city in Italy. If you like mountains and beauty and thermal spas and shopping and anything good then you'd probably really enjoy Moreno. It is stunning. It is completely surrounded by mountains which makes the climate mild and really lovely. It is famous for its health spa resort and really diverse vegetation (palm trees included). It was slightly misty when we arrived which gave this beautiful thick fog over the mountains. My friends and I decided that we would try out the spa. I think we're beginning to think we're the type of people that go to spas now...we aren't. It wasn't anything spectacular but dang I will take sitting in a warm pool-like bath outside if I'm surrounded by mountains. Over 50% of the population is actually German-speaking here and you can tell its proximity to Austria by the buildings and some of the typical dishes (we were all given a pretzel which was so delicious I didn't catch a picture of it). It's a fairly quiet town but seems like a wonderful place to get away from life and take in some ridiculous views.

Bolzano

I have to actually hit two days when I talk about Bolzano because this was where we stayed. We arrived here on Friday night and spent Saturday in Innsbruck but returned here and spent part of Sunday here as well. Our program directors explained to us that Bolzano is so close to Austria that to them it feels like they are in a foreign country. Most of the citizens here are actually allegiant to Austria and this is also very apparent in architecture and gastronomy. Our hotel was directly in the city center and was quite nice. We pretty much immediately went to the restaurant at the hotel because we were ready for food. I was absolutely not disappointed. After realizing "fries" were not on the menu I decided to just wing it and order something I could only make out as "mussel soup" with white wine. The "soup" came out looking more like I just ordered a bowl of mussels which was exactly what I was hoping for. The very small amount of tomato soup in the bowl gave the mussels a completely different taste than I have ever had, it was to die for.

We went back to our rooms to settle and then headed back out to a very cool wine bar with a cave-like atmosphere where my glass of proseco was only three euros. That's all I ask for.

After our trip to Innsbruck, we decided to hit up the free spa in our hotel on Saturday night. Though it was basically a hot tub, two saunas and a steam room, it was actually quite pleasant and relaxing due to the atmosphere and the fact that they provided slippers. We sipped on herbal tea and released all of our toxins and stress (we were very stressed considering it had been about 27 hours since our last visit to the spa).

The next morning we met in our hotel lobby to walk over to the gondola taking us up the mountain.  The ride was very misleading because just as we reached the top of the mountain in sight, we continued back and deeper into the stinking range but it was so cool! I never realized how into mountains I am until coming over here. These were very green, covered in tons of vineyards and spotted with adorable cottages. We finally reached the top and were given free time in the very small village there. Maddie, Mary Beth, Andrew and I found a hotel/restaurant with a panoramic view of the mountains and enjoyed one of the best spritz I've had since being in Italy.

Spritz Aperol is an extremely popular aperitif enjoyed at basically any time of day. It's made with Aperol (no one really knows what the heck this is), sparkling wine and club soda.

Innsbruck, Austria
First off, I could not sleep a wink the entire bus ride from Bolzano to Austria. Another huge benefit of going on this optional trip was that we took a charter bus together which sounds like a pain and a long drive but there was not one second of the drive that was not absolutely stunning.

We hopped off the bus and I'm not kidding you this was our immediate view:

It's a pretty small town actually so it is easy to hit in one day. It really seems straight out of a story book with very colorful buildings and snowcapped mountains peeking over them everywhere. Even in the center of the city you can see the snowcaps in the distance, it is lovely. It reminded me quite a bit of what I would imagine Germany to look like once you are deeper in the city. We walked around a bit and saw stores with lederhosen, beer and pretzels. We went to one of the biggest (the biggest?) Swarovski Crystal stores in the world which was beautiful. We grabbed lunch at this cute little place that's exactly how you would picture an Austrian restaurant to look. I originally ordered trout but the waitress informed me it was served cold which freaked me out so I ordered wiener schnitzel on a whim. If you know me, this is completely out of character. Meat that is not chicken honestly freaks me out and to be honest, I thought that veal was deer.

Wiener schnitzel with parsley potatoes and a lager, of course.

I was very pleasantly surprised. It was delicious! I tried to not ever look at what was inside the fried part and that seemed to help me a lot. I even tried it with the jam which was a great sweet/savory taste. We decided that since we were only in Austria for a few hours we would ball out so we got two desserts which were to die for.

Apple strudel. Dang. I wanted to take this home with me in my purse.

Sachertorte is the most well-known Austrian dessert. A dense chocolate cake with a thin layer of apricot jam in the middle.

North Lake Garda

After our morning gondola ride in Bolzano, we hopped on the bus and began our journey home on Sunday. We cut our time slightly short in Bolzano since we had spent so much time there already and with the extra hour and a half or so, decided to make a stop at the northern part of Lake Garda. The southern part of the lake is technically in Verona but the north is known for being absolutely beautiful with high mountains-people think of it as the Lake Como of Northern Italy.

It truly is the unexpected moments that always end up being the best. I was completely speechless when we saw the lake. Similar to our time in Merano, it was almost rainy but not quite which cast this immaculate mist over the high mountaintops completely surrounded the dark but calm lake. I was terribly overwhelmed. We spent a very short amount of time there but I could have easily spent all day just sitting and looking over the water. Palm trees, mountains, fog and sailboats. I cannot say enough about how much I loved this place.

We returned home extremely exhausted that day. We hit five cities in less than 72 hours. I only cried a few times. This life is too good to me.

I should probably have gone to bed a few hours ago considering I have an early flight tomorrow but I've learned to live on the edge. Next stop, London!