Daily Life in Italy: Bolzano

We woke up to a chilly Sunday morning in Bolzano. After packing up, we went downstairs for breakfast then checked out and took our luggage to the car. The hotel management was nice and let us keep our car in their garage for the day.

Hotel Feichter

Our plan was to explore Bolzano, even if it was a very quiet Sunday morning. We decided to ride up on the cable car to Overbozen. The Renon/Rittner lift was only a few blocks from our hotel. Its a new and very modern gondola that whisks you to the top of the tourist town of Oberbozen in about 10 minutes.

Cloudy view of the Dolomites from the Renon/Rittner gondola.

Train that funs along the ridge, connecting several villages

A happy boy

Mountain views from Oberbozen

The most modern bell tower and church we have seen in Europe

It was very cold at the top, so we kept moving. We walked around town a little bit then headed back to the gondola for the ride back to Bolzano.

Looking down on Bolzano. The old city is on the right, railyard straight ahead.

Yep, we're still in Italy, where you can park on the sidewalk if there aren't any spaces available.

We wanted to visit the South Tirol Museum of Archeology, so we walked through the old town to find it. What an excellent museum. We have been to many archeology museums since we've lived here and appreciate the importance of the displays. But, at most museums it gets a little dull when you are looking at room after room of broken pottery, tools and random pieces.

This museum did a wonderful job of making their displays interesting. There are informative displays, models and video demonstrations that take you from the Paleolithic era to the Roman period and into the Middle Ages.

The highlight of the museum is Otzi the Ice Man. His frozen body was discovered high on the Italian/Austrian border by some German hikers in 1991. Experts initially thought he was a lost hiker, but soon realized that he was actually a 5,300 year old nearly perfectly preserved man with clothing and gear. You can see all of this, including his body (which is kept in a temperature controlled room).

It was lunchtime, so we made out way to a Cinese restaurant we had spotted earlier, stopping along the way to take pictures.

Candy roses, all ready for Saint Valentine's Day.

The Cathedral, with its glazed tile roof is typical of the Germanic world. The church was flattened in WWII (the downside of being so close to the train station).