Hiking the Dolomites: Lago di Braies, Tre Cime di Lavaredo, & Lago di Sorapis | Italy Day 1

If we had to leave tomorrow for some reason, we would be like satisfied. Like we've seen so much beautiful stuff this morning alone. It's just, we can't stop smiling. Ciao from Italy. 30 hours ago, we left Austin for a two week Italian adventure. We had a short layover in London and did some lounge hopping. We then flew into Venice. And had a two hour nightmare getting our rental car. Before finally driving to the Dolomites. Which is where we are now. And we're going to spend two days here before heading to Venice, Matera, Positano, Rome, Florence, so many cities. We are so excited to kick off the trip and share it all with you guys. So excited. So unfortunately the weather doesn't look awesome for our time here in the Dolomites. There's a lot of rain clouds and lightning bolts in the forecast, but this morning and most of today is supposed to be pretty nice. So we're going to hit up three scenic areas and hopefully see as much as we can before the weather rolls in. Yeah. And we are kicking it off with the sunrise at Lago di Braese. Disclaimer, I'm going to give these Italian names a full go, but they're kind of tough. We're going to try our best, but we can't make any promises that they're accurate. So we are sorry in advance. This lake is insane. I feel like I had a tear in my eye when we walked up because it is just jaw droppingly beautiful and it's becoming extremely popular. I've been seeing a lot on Instagram. It's definitely more popular spot, but for good reason, it is stunning. And this morning it's not even really that busy. The parking was super easy. We just walked right up to it and it's just like, bam, right in your face. So I think the reason it's so popular is because it's so easy to access. There's a parking lot it's at, there's a hotel right here on the water, which would be amazing to stay at. So they have parking lots you can park at. You do have to pay, I think you get one hour for free though, but you basically just park and walk right up. So I think that makes it really easy for people of all ages and abilities to come check out this lake, but it's beautiful. We saw maybe like six people so far that we've actually like walked past. It's really quiet this morning and it's a beautiful morning. I don't know. They have these boats that are just like perfectly lined out on the water. Yeah. Uh, if you've ever been to Banff, it gets, it's got like major Banff vibes, but then like, if you look at the mountains, it's like, I don't know, it reminds me of Yosemite mountains across between those two awesome places. So it's unreal. I'm, I'm completely in awe. One other thing about this lake is that there's a trail that goes around the lake or at least partially around the lake. I overheard someone saying it's about three miles, but I'm not totally sure. I heard it takes about like an hour, hour and a half to go around, but unfortunately we don't have the time because we're trying to visit other spots today. Yeah. So depending on how much time you have, you can just walk right up to the main viewpoint or if you want to make it more of an activity and walk the whole thing. And I think you can rent these rowboats. It's not open right now, so that would be super fun as well. So we have an hour drive to our next stop, but honestly the drives here are so awesome that I would sit in the car for forever. Yeah. Driving here is, it's just so much fun. The roads are so windy and the scenery is just freaking unreal. Yeah. Awesome. You also drive through so many cute little towns like villages, just like the cutest buildings. Like, Oh, last night when we were driving here from Venice, we drove through so many cute places and we wish we had time to stop, but we were kind of on a time crunch cause our Airbnb host waited up until we got there and it was like 11 PM. So yeah, driving here is just incredible. One thing to know though, if you want to drive here is you have to get an international driver's permit. So Adam, you got the triple A? Yeah, I went to triple A and you show them like your regular driver's license. You fill out a little form. It was only 20 US dollars. So easy. It was an easy process. Pretty cheap. So. Yeah. And then you get to show that when you get your rental car and then, you know, if you were to get pulled over or anything, you need to have that. So that's one thing that we didn't know, but our friend told us. So without that we'd be kind of screwed. All right, we've made it to Tres Chimes de Lavaredo or at least I think that's how you say it. We're practicing. It is a 10 kilometer, so around six mile loop hike around these things called the Tres Chimes, which are basically, which means three pillars. So we haven't seen them yet, but they look awesome for what I've seen online. So when you pull up to the park, there's a little hut with the guy in there he's going to ask you for 30 euros, which is the toll to enter to drive up the road. You pay, you take a ticket, drive up the long windy road up to the parking lot. There was plenty of parking when we got here and as soon as you step out of the car, it's just like boom. So 30 euros may seem like a lot to come go on a hike, but the way we think about it is like in the US when you go to a national park, it's usually $30 a car per day. So it's pretty comparable. And I mean, like Adam said, just even parking here, it's like mind-blowingly beautiful. It's totally worth every, every penny. So we keep saying that like if we had to leave tomorrow for some reason, we would be like satisfied. Like we've seen so much beautiful stuff this morning alone. It's just, we can't stop smiling. We can't stop talking about how awesome it is. We're going to be a broken record for sure. But yeah, this is just unreal. So one of the really cool things about hiking in the Dolomites is they have these things called refugios, which are basically, they're usually a cafe or they have coffee and you can also stay there. So it's really great if you're backpacking. So we're at our first one. Well, technically we started at once. We're at the second one. It's refugio Lavaredo. And so we got two macchiatos and then we got this apple cake thing, which looks really good. Um, disclaimer, I normally don't eat gluten, but I've heard a rumor that if you don't have celiac, you can eat gluten in Italy and not feel sick. And same with dairy. So I'm going for it. I have some special pills from my doctor and we're just going to see how it goes. So if I feel bad, I'll stop. But in case you're like, why is she eating so much gluten? That's why. Yeah. This hike is incredible. There are just so many views like all around. I expected the Tre Cime to be like the main attraction, but honestly the views around are like equally as beautiful. It's awesome. And they say this trail takes like three and a half hours, but I have a feeling it'll take us longer cause we cannot stop stopping. Every 10 steps you're like, Oh crap, I want to take this photo. Oh man. Oh yeah, you can do a video of this. Yeah. We, uh, we're not being the most efficient, but that's okay. It's a beautiful day. We're soaking it up. It is awesome. So we just left the second refugio and come down this windy hill and we're down in the bottom of this Valley here and it might not look, might look deceiving on camera, but gotta go all the way back up there. Whoever wrote on their blog that this wasn't that hard was lying. Wouldn't say it's like super challenging. It's just, there are some hard parts. I wouldn't say it's easy. We just finished the hike, the Tre Chime. Oh man. Epic. That was an epic hike. Yeah. It was a worker. Worked ya but it was totally worth it. It is warm out now. And the sun is out and yeah, pretty uphill at times, but Oh my gosh, what an awesome hike. The mountains here are just unreal. They're, they're like so jagged and I love jagged mountains. I tend to like the ones that are really like mountains that are really rocky looking and the mountains here like that. And it's just incredible. And you know, we didn't really think it was that busy to be honest. I heard it would be a nightmare with like tour buses and stuff and there are a few buses parked now, but we started around 8am and I think it's noon now. Yeah. So it took us four hours. So just a little bit over the three and a half that they say makes sense. We stopped a lot, but there are a lot of cars in the parking lot, but I mean, we just didn't see that many people. Yeah. I feel like everyone kind of like stops at the refugio. Some people keep going. I think people spread out a lot. So don't let the crowd scare you away and don't let that 30 euro scare you away either because I would pay like a hundred euros to come here. It's incredible. We are now going to head 30 minutes down the road to our final hike of the day and I'm really excited for this one. And our final hike of the day is Lago de Sorapice, which is a around seven mile hike or so and 650 meters of elevation gain. I know miles and meters don't go together, but I forget their counterparts. So that's what we're going with, but it should be a beautiful hike. It's one of those like Gatorade blue lakes or it's supposed to be. And those are always my favorite. Yeah. The parking situation is pretty limited. Although it's free, uh, the parking lot is small, but there's extra parking on the, on the street. They're not too far out. So yeah, we found a spot and I guess one other thing to note that we just learned is that there are two trail heads or there's multiple ways to get to the lake. So I think I intended for us to start in a different area, but Google maps brought us here. So it looks like we can get there. So here we are. It'll work out. It may just not be the same route that I had planned. This trail tried to tease us. It started out as like a flat for service type road and then it went bam. I'm exhausted now. 600 meters is a deceiving number. Adam forgot that you like multiply it by three something to get feet and we're hiking at, I'm not sure the elevation, but definitely higher than what we're used to. Yeah. We're uh, not sure how far along we are. Hopefully over halfway. Yeah. Um, we need, we needed more water to bring more water. Yeah. We're struggling right now to be honest. It's the hottest part of the day probably out of water. We're praying and hoping that they have water at their refugio at the top. If not, we may just stay at the lake forever. Yeah, it's okay. Once we get to the top, it's going to be worth it. We're going to forget how much we hate life right now and we're going to love it because it's going to be beautiful. We just got to get there first. Yeah. I've never been so happy. We will never ever run out of water again. Don't be like us. Pack like five times more water than you need. Sorry. We got a bit negative there for a second. We try to be positive, but sometimes it's hard. Yeah. I feel a hundred times better now that I've got water and made a world of a difference. I had to sit there for a little bit. So, but we haven't even seen the lake yet. So I feel like our moods are going to get even better. Let's go check it out. Okay. Yup. That was worth it. So there's a couple of things that you should know about this trail. So when we were researching it, we heard about two trails to get to this lake 215 and 216. So when we showed up today and we were reading the map of the trailhead we were at, it said 217. And we're like, Oh, we haven't heard of that one before. And now we know why I can't prove it. Like it's not, this isn't a fact. This is my very strong opinion, but I'm convinced that we were on the harder of the two. I kept hearing don't take 216. It's harder than 215. But I think 217 is the hardest. And I mean, we didn't really see many people on the trail. I mean, we saw like a handful when we got down to the lake and there's a ton of people here. So it's including like really small children that, I mean, if they could do the trail we did, I am extremely impressed. We had to climb kind of like use our hands at points, but you're scrambling. Yeah. So I don't know. I, this trail was really hard. So if you're going to do this hike, I would highly recommend making sure you go to the 215 trailhead. One perfect thing though was the weather. It was, it was awesome. It was perfect. The forecast was calling for thunderstorms and it was perfect the whole time. Yeah. It's gorgeous. It was, it was warm and sunny and nice breeze right now. Yeah. And so our plan was to do everything we did today, tomorrow and do stuff more in town, the town we're staying at today. But we saw the weather forecast and today was like going to be nice most of the day then storms and tomorrow was supposed to be like rainy and storms. So we switched it. And I'm so glad we did because although we didn't get much sleep last night and getting up for sunrise was very brutal after all of our traveling, uh, you know, we've had the best weather today and it's just been absolutely perfect day. And so we're going to cross our fingers tomorrow is not as bad as it seems because there's still some really cool stuff we want to do. But you know, honestly we've seen three of the most beautiful places we've ever been in our entire life today in one day. And so it's just absolutely mind blowing. It's seriously been like the best day ever. Even with the little hiccups we've had. Okay. We're about to head back down. We have two full water bottles plus the swans that were good on water. We're feeling more upbeat and excited. And an hour and a half later we made it back to the car. We beat our time going up. So that is awesome. And we are pooped. What a day. It was a beautiful and awesome and such a fun day. But man, we are absolutely exhausted between flying from Austin to Italy getting maybe like six hours of like real sleep total the last two days and hiking like 15 miles today. We were just like completely wiped out for sure. But tomorrow should be a lot of fun because we're finally going to get to check out the area that we're staying in. We're going to head up to a mountainous area and then we'll head into town and we heard that there's a festival going on. So that should be pretty cool. I'm excited. But now we got to get some rest so we can actually have a fun day tomorrow. Good night. What you doing? I'm trying to learn like the local Italian bathroom tactics. I don't know how to use a bidet. We made it to trade. We made it to trade.