For Rob’s latest milestone birthday, we decided to take a couple trips. One in August up north into the mountains where it was cooler, one this fall to a seaside town he’s wanted to visit for a long time! So Monday morning we hopped into the car and headed north, stopping for lunch in Bolzano. A small-ish town in the region of Trentino-Alto Adige (which is an autonomous province). This region like all in Italy has a lot of history but only became “Italian” in the last hundred years or so. When you’re there, signs are mostly in German and Italian or just in German. Most people we heard around us were speaking German, though as we’ve found in most of Europe so far, most people spoke at least 2-3 languages (German, Italian and largely English). It gets tricky quickly as that means even the places have 2 names so Bolzano is the Italian name for the town, Bozen is the German!
While in Bolzano to take advantage of their Austrian/German style heritage we stopped for lunch at Wirtshaus Vögele, a restaurant in a location of a tavern from around 1870. Today they are recognized in the 2026 Michelin Guide Italia as Bib Gourmand (good quality, good value restaurant).
After lunch we continued our drive and at one point in our drive were within around 5 km of Switzerland (Svizzera) and 3 km from Austria. The drive was beautiful and we couldn’t get over the apple trees which aren’t shaped like the trees we were used to. Tried finding some wineries that day but nothing was super well marked so we gave up!
I’d heard of a small town (Curon Venosta) that had an interesting feature… So we drove up and enjoyed the views before going to our hotel to settle in. The town (and bell tower) were submerged on purpose in making a local reservoir.
Curon Venosta
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Curon Venosta-8a
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Curon Venosta-12a
Curon Venosta-13a
Curon Venosta-14a
We stayed in a small town right between two lakes (St. Valentin auf der Haide) at the base of a ski resort.
And walked down the hill to happy hour/dinner at Zum See. As we walked two groups of young men were practicing their skiing in the offseason! Enjoyed a Lillet wildberry spritz with our appetizer plate and learned that we LOVE Kaminwurzen (a smoked salami common in that area). We had to look it up and the sausage is smoked and tastes how it does because they used to smoke this style of sausage at home in their fireplace. Of course we bought a lot to bring home with us! Then on to wine and a calzone we split since lunch was a lot!
Day 2… We got up and went to what I’d planned as our first real stop of the trip. Visiting the first whiskey distillery in Italy. Honestly, we weren’t sure what to expect. Thought it would probably be… ok. Instead, it was a great stop so we left with a couple bottles and continued to be impressed as we watched the wife of the son whose dad started the distillery switch between English, Italian and German effortlessly as different people came into the tasting room! The father had a real passion for Scotch and visited Scotland and Islay many times before deciding to start his own distillery. Once he made that decision, he purchased the stills directly from Scotland and worked with a local architect and Scottish experts to create the distillery. Scotch ages much faster given the huge temperature swings in the region (compared to Scotland) and they’re trying different things using local ingredients and barrels to age some of their products. Super fun stop to start the day!
The distillery is in a small town called Glorenza (or Glurns for our German speaking friends). We loved walking around and checking out the medieval town and churches. We’d noticed while driving the day before and it continued as we walked around Glorenza noticing many statues of Jesus on the cross. As a very dominantly Catholic area, we learned those were placed by local families as offerings for good weather for example, or by the towns and used as navigational markers. It was super interesting and not something we’ve seen in other places we’ve traveled.
Time for more food of course! One thing Rob was craving that we can’t get locally is Thai food. So I found an extremely yummy stop along the way at Mein Thai.
After lunch a stop at Speck World to get some of that sausage and some local bread (made with rye and fennel that we fell in love with!)
An eventful day so we just wanted to relax when we got to our next hotel where we made some spritzes and enjoyed the views…
