Bolzano and Völs am Schlern, Italy

Last weekend, we were invited to come out to Northern Italy by our friends Scott and Nina. Scott is an Australian from my German class, and Nina is his Italian girlfriend. Nina's family has a holiday house in the mountains just outside of Bolzano ("Bozen" in German), so we spent a few days there. I never knew this until recently, but a large part of northern Italy is German speaking, so this region is very different from the parts of Italy we've been to. It's still very German/Austrian, but with a definite Italian flavour.

First we arrived in Bolzano, and toured the city. It was very pretty, and we were lucky to have a nice, warm sunny day when we arrived. The city is surrounded by mountains, and has a nice big downtown full of nice shops, cafés, restaurants, and well dressed Italians.

We then went to the holiday house. The location of the house is fantastic. You walk out onto the patio and you are looking right at the Schlern, a huge mountain peak. We spent the next couple of days hiking, tobogganing (on a wooden death trap where Erin refused to steer or use the brakes), sampling the local cuisine (speck and knüdel) and on Monday, some snowboarding. It was just the second time snowboarding for Erin, and my first, so we spent as much time on our asses as we did on our feet, but it was still fun to give it shot. More pictures from the weekend are below.