Exploring Seceda + Ortisei in the Dolomites | Italy Day 2

This is why we travel. It's for experiences like this. This is so cool. It is our second day in Italy and our last day in the Dolomites and we just had the best morning ever. We can't stop smiling. It was so cool. So for some background, we've been staying in this town called Ortisei. It actually also has two other names. So this region of Italy has like three languages that they speak. German, Italian and then Leiden which is a language specific to this area of Italy. And so we've been staying with this German couple in their house, which normally we don't like to stay in someone's house with them, but this has been the best experience ever and exactly why we want to travel and go abroad and just experience other cultures. Yeah. So we normally, yeah, we don't normally stay with people in their house. It can be kind of weird, you know, but this time was the best. Uh, so we got up this morning, we told them when we were going to leave and they said, Oh, come down for coffee in the morning. Last night we were like so excited for this morning already. So we come down this morning and they have like this spread on the table with like these pastries and they asked, do you want espresso? You want this? Do you want that? It was, it was amazing. Yeah. So they gave us like multiple coffees, tons of food. We also, this morning as we were getting ready, we heard these like booming noises. It sounded like a cannon and they told us that this, these cannons go off only two times a year. So we got so lucky that we were here to experience it. They were just like the absolute nicest couple ever. We there's a huge language barrier. So they only speak German and we only speak English. So we were communicating via like Google translate conversation and it was just so awesome. I don't know. It was just, we can't stop smiling about it. It was so cool. So we will link to their Airbnb below because if you were in this area, you have to stay with them. Their Airbnb is called grandparents house, which was already the cutest name ever. So we already knew we'd love it. But yeah, they just exceeded our expectations. They made like our time in this area. So, so, so special. Like I don't know how anything can top the experience. Yeah. I mean this town is just awesome from what we've seen so far, but like that experience just like took it to the next level. It was, yeah, amazing. It was amazing. So we have officially left them, which made us so sad. Yeah, it was hard to go. We are going to go up this mountain called Sechera and you take a gondola up to the top. It's 2,500 meters up and it's supposed to be really beautiful. And the sun, as you could probably see, cause I'm probably like really bright. The sun is out. Should be a beautiful morning before storms roll in. So we're going to take advantage of it and go do some walking around up there and just, I don't know. We're never going to want to leave later. It's going to be so awesome. The days just keep getting better and better. Yeah. I'm so excited. It's ridiculous. Here we go. We're in the lift to get to the top of Sechera. And we have the whole thing to ourselves. Perks of getting here early. That's our motto. Get places early and you will be rewarded. This thing moves quick. So we just got off at the first station and we're about to connect to another gondola to go to the next station. Made it to the top and between the two lifts, it took about 20 minutes or so. So it was a really solid ride and the views were incredible the whole time. It does cost 32 euros a person to come up here, which is pretty steep. But between the really long ride, all the views and then the views we have yet to see, I have a feeling it's going to be worth it. This is absolutely insane. Oh my gosh. So crazy. This is a whole nother world. It seems like. This is so cool. And there's no one up here. The only people that came up with us were some paragliders, but I don't see them anymore. So it's really, it's literally just us. Once you get up here, there's tons of stuff to do. So you can walk to other areas. There's lifts to take you to other areas. There's refugios. I think there's a restaurant up here, a steakhouse. I saw. So cool, man. We're going to be broken records again today. We can't, we can't stop smiling. This is just, I've just never seen anything like this only in pictures. Yeah. Oh gosh. This is just unreal. It reminds me, it reminds me a little bit, this area right here, a little bit of when we're in the Isle of Skye in Scotland last year, which is also amazing. How do you recommend going there? Scotland's awesome. So what we're going to do next is we're going to go down this super steep hill to this little Batia is what they're called. And maybe get a snack, maybe get a coffee. Who knows? So we thought we saw a dog earlier, which we get really excited about, but turns out it's a goat, which is probably even cooler. One thing that we love about hiking in this area is that they have a ton of trail markers. And one cool thing about the trail markers is they tell you how long it'll get to each spot, which is just really cool because some things look really far away here. You're like, Oh wow, that's going to take forever to get to. And then they'll say, Oh, it takes 20 minutes or it takes 25 minutes. So as you're going up and down hills a lot, it's just kind of nice to have a good idea of how long it'll actually take you to get from place to place. It makes it a little less scary when it's all uphill. So Catherine told me the wrong name. She said Batia, but it's actually Baita or Baita. So we're here at the Baita Troyer Hoot. I think that's how you say it. So we got two cappuccinos and then this delicious looking thing is like baked roll or baked yeast bread with apricot filling. And then you dip it through this wonderful looking vanilla cream sauce. Oh my gosh. I'm so excited. This looks so good. All of the huts and like refugios that they have in these areas are just so cool and it's just so awesome to see like a different way that people live and just like simplicity of it all. I don't know. Like this is, this is why we travel the big, we are excited for the big cities. Don't get us wrong. Like we're excited to go to Rome and Florence, but like this smaller town, just like local feel. Yeah. Like we're, we've been one of the few like people from the U S I think around anywhere. Yeah. I don't know. I've heard very little English, so we've been surrounded by a ton of other cultures and yeah, this is, this is why we travel. It's for experiences like this. This is so cool. So out of the few huts that we've been to so far on this trip, I think this one was my favorite. It was just so delicious. The inside was so cool. It was so nice in there. The views. Awesome. Highly recommend like just going like hut hopping while you're here and just get like sweet treats and coffee. Nothing better than that. No, we're not eating at this hut. It might be my new favorite because there are bunnies and there are donkeys and they let you pet the donkeys and feed the donkeys and it touched my hand and it was really weird, but it was really fun too. Oh, and the views are incredible. Everything just keeps getting better and better. We need to stop saying like this is our favorite cause then like the next thing we want to say. You would think we've never seen cows before because of how excited we are, but there's just something about seeing cows in the middle of this like beautiful field with mountains. That's way better than seeing it like on a farm while driving through Texas. We're on the way down now and there was a big group behind us waiting to get onto one of the lifts and they didn't want to come with us. So we have another one to ourselves. There's a lot more people up here now, so it's definitely a lot busier. You actually, one thing we didn't mention is you can hike up to the top, which I had looked into to do for sunrise and Adam's like, thank God, you didn't make me do that. But there is a pretty clear path and it looks like it would be easy to do in terms of like the terrain, but not in terms of the elevation. That would be really steep. It's way up there. You can also, when you're up there, they have tons of paths all over. That's kind of what we were wandering around and you can take them to the next town over and then take a bus back to this town, which is so cool. That would take probably all day, but you could stop and get snacks along the way and I don't know. If we had more time, we definitely would have done that. Unfortunately we're running low on time today. That's definitely like a backpacker thing. Like you just show up to this town and like you want to explore the whole area. Like that's what you would do. You just hop around, buy the ticket up here, check this out and then go down to the next one. Yeah. And there's like on the other side of, I guess maybe the Valley from the town we're in, there's um, a lift that takes you up to this other area. So getting around like you mostly just get around via lifts and your feet here. It's pretty awesome. We made it back down from Secheta. So now we're walking to the festival. And as I mentioned earlier, this town speaks three different languages and there's also three names to the town. The one that we've been calling it is... Ortisei. There's also St. Ulrich and then there's also one that we don't really know how to say, but it's like Yerdejei. We'll write it down. That one's probably our least accurate one. So it's just really, it's really cool. It does make planning very complicated. So when I was planning this trip, like every town has multiple names in different languages. So it was hard because I'd read one blog saying like, do this in this town. Then someone else would say that in another town. And it took a second for me to understand. Yes. So just know that it is a little complicated, but it's really cool because it's like a melting pot of different cultures here. So we made it to the festival and it's so cool. There's music playing. There's people in traditional outfits. It's really chaotic. There's tons of people, but really, really fun. So we didn't know what to do at first, but you just come and sit down and they come take your order. And then they bring you your food and we got a lot of food. I think she was like, are you wondering, are you going to be done ordering? We just wanted to try everything. So hungry. We have a feast here. So we got, of course, a sausage, come with bread. This is a skewer of turkey. It looks like there's some peppers or it might be tomatoes in between, probably peppers. And then a half chicken. And then of course, the top of it all up. French fries. It's in a swirl. It's really fun to eat. Of course we had to get this massive and delicious looking funnel cake. Apparently just use your hands. I'm just going to go for, Oh my God. It's so hot. Oh, it's going to burn my mouth. I'm so excited. There's like some kind of jam. Amazing. You never know like what the food quality is going to be like when you go to markets and stuff. But that was very good. Beats the heck out of all the American carnivals and stuff. It's weird though. Cause we feel like we're in Germany right now, but we're in Italy. So it's kind of fun. We're getting like a little glimpse of Germany. And even though we don't get to go there on this trip, such a cool like Italian German mix. It's just awesome. We are so bummed because we have to head out to make our way to Venice, which is about a four hour drive and it's starting to rain a bit. We don't want to be doing the whole drive in the rain if possible. Yeah. Our little rental car is not the best. So trying to prevent any, it's like a go car that tries to be a car. Yeah. We have absolutely loved the Dolomites. We don't want to leave. We could easily spend like two weeks, the whole trip here. It's just beautiful in the towns are so cool. If you've never been to the Dolomites, add it to your bucket list. It is incredible. It's worth the trek from either Venice or Milan and then probably some other countries you can fly into as well. It's just so beautiful, but we are excited to get to Venice and explore that too. So that should be really fun. Half left until we get to the Venice airport to drop off our car and we need a little caffeine boost. So I found just a random place that sells coffee and it actually ended up being like the cutest little area. I don't, I have no idea what this area is called. I don't know, but it's like all their buildings are on this one main road and like the mountain is behind that and then on this side is just a river right by us. Oh cool. And the buildings are beautiful. They're all kind of different colors and like stone and lots of flowers and I don't know. I kind of just want to stay and hang out here. Darn places to be unfortunately, even though it's not unfortunate we're going to Venice. We're very excited. It's just really fun to find cool little gems like this and it just feels very local and like not like a touristy area at all. So after a few hours and a few delays, we finally made it to Venice to our Airbnb. It was quite the journey and we learned a couple of things along the way. So I thought I'd share some of our Italy tips with you guys. So first gas stations. It's not as easy to get gas, at least in Northern Italy by the Dolomites as it is in the US. So a lot of the gas stations close really early. So plan in advance because you don't want it to be 8pm and you need gas and nothing's open. Some of them are open 24 seven and they do have self service. Most of them are not self service. Someone pumps it for you. So for the ones that are self service, you need to put in your card or cash at the pump. However you do not get change back for your cash. So we had a situation today where we put a 50 euro in because that's all we had and we did not need 50 euros of gas. So we did not get the change back. So we lost about 20 euros, which is a bummer, but I think we're finally over it. Also, one other thing that we learned today is at least in Venice, not a ton of like quick places are open late at night. So we got here on 10pm. We were starving. We didn't plan in advance for dinner because planning in advance was not on our itinerary today. So we were walking around, we were trying to Google places to eat. There's just not a lot of like grab and go type places. You know, in the U S we could just go to like a McDonald's. That's a bad example, but just to give you an idea. So we ended up finding a grocery store that was closing in like seven minutes. We ran in and we grabbed whatever we could find. We ended up having a nice little pasta dinner. So it worked out pretty well, but we were kind of frantic for a second that we were going to be stuck just eating like our leftover protein bars and an apple. So try to plan in advance for that as well. If you're arriving somewhere late, make sure you look up if places are open late and where you can get food so you don't get hangry like we have been. So that is the end of the Dolomites portion of our trip. We hope you enjoyed following along. We will be publishing a guide at some point. I'm not sure when it's going to be right now. We're trying to get all these blogs out. So the guides are kind of on the back burner, but if you want to stay up to date with what guides are coming out and when follow us on Instagram at adventures of a plus K and also subscribe to our email newsletter, we'll send out one email a month and we list everything that we published that month. So you don't miss anything, but we are very excited for tomorrow because we are in Venice and it's one of Adams, like one of the spots Adam's most excited for. And I'm really excited too. So we're going to hit the hay, get an early start and have an awesome day.