“It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves”
– Edmund Hilary

“Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt”
– Jon Muir

Imagine a place surrounded by a 360-degree view of mountain ranges so tall and rugged they seem to jut right into the heavens, sometimes shrouded by fluffy clouds of cotton candy, illuminating the sky in bright oranges and pinks during sunset. When the sun rises, the crisp air makes the hairs on your skin stand ever so slightly, a nice reprieve from the normal August mid-day heat. Soft purples paint the dawn sky as the moon sets in the distance and the sun slowly starts to wake up the town. Imagine deep valleys in the heart of the mountains built in Bavarian architecture, charming and filled with wild goats and sheep roaming freely. As you gaze up into the clear blue sky, you are delighted with paragliders swooping through the valleys and soaring above peaks like majestic eagles. This place exists, and it is called the Dolomites in Northern Italy, a climbers and hikers paradise in the Italian Alps.

Dolomiti Bellunesi National Park was added to the UNESCO world heritage list in 2009 for its geological uniqueness. If you are planning a trip to this beautiful slice of the world (which I highly recommend!), head on over to their official website to learn more and plan your trip. But first, read through this post for tips on where to stay and how to hike in the Dolomites.

Where to Stay in the Dolomites

We stayed a total of three nights in the area. Belluno is the closest main town to the Dolomites, just a 30-minute drive from one of the many main entrances to the national park. (Entrance to the park is free.) In the town of Belluno, you can stock up on sundries, groceries at Super W (their local supermarket), or have a meal at one of their several pizzerias and other casual restaurants. The nearby town of Feltre is also a good home base if you have a rental car.

Rifugios

Rifugios (refuge) are usually family-owned accommodation with rooms for sleeping and a restaurant/bar that typically serves local, home made food for hikers who are passing through the mountains on long journeys, such as the one from Munich, Germany to Venice, Italy, a 30-day hiking trek along the E5 trail. Rifugios are usually located away from cities in remote locations. They are open to the public, so both locals and transient travelers visit, and no prior reservations are required; you simply show up and come as you are.

We book most of our accommodation on our long-term travel adventures through Booking.com. This is where we found Rifugio Col Di Roanza, which, unbeknownst to us, turned out to be a rifugio! Here’s a photo of the beautiful property.

Our bedroom was upstairs, just above the outdoor restaurant patio. The room was small but it was all we needed since we only used it for sleeping and were out all day hiking. When we were home, we used the bright open space indoors to work on our laptops (Wi-Fi is free and relatively reliable and fast.) Keep in mind that during summer months, it can get quite hot and there is no air conditioning or fans provided, but it does cool down quite a bit at night. There are no screens on the windows, but thankfully very few bugs and no mosquitoes. During wintertime, it gets below freezing.

The owner’s name is Cristina, a single woman originally from Venice. She runs the entire place on her own with a bit of wait staff help for her restaurant, Bar Roanza, which is a large space and has a lovely outdoor patio with large umbrellas to provide shade from the strong mountain sun. Cristina is vegetarian and co-owns a farm near Venice, which supplies most of the food she cooks and serves in her restaurant. We enjoyed this beautiful mountain backdrop view several times during our meals.

Her property is quite large and contains two beautiful wild horses and three donkeys, who loved cuddles and were calm and tame. They crave human attention and love getting their pets! Don’t worry, they don’t bite, but the baby girl will lick and kiss you.

There were some folks doing a WorkAway here on the farm and helping out in the kitchen, learning how to cook and speak Italian. We met a gal from Georgia (of Vietnamese heritage with a Southern drawl) and a guy from Brazil, both doing the WorkAway. I love experiences where we get to chat with the people who picked and harvested our food, helped prepare it, and ultimately serve it to our table.

We enjoyed many delicious vegetarian (and one meat) meals during our stay, which are reasonably priced (between €6 – 15 per dish.) Here we have zucchini pie (savory) with green beans sautéed in olive oil, garlic and fresh herbs, served with a side of boiled beets and potatoes baked with onions. They make their own mint syrup that you add to sparkling water so that you can make your own healthy pop. Everything is from right here in this region of Italy, made from the hands of a woman who is passionate about food, farms, and healthy eating.

These are the travel experiences I live for, especially as a foodie who enjoys the process of growing, cooking and taking my time savoring food and understanding where it comes from. Speaking with many locals over the course of our travels, people tend to view Americans negatively when it comes to how we approach food. They think that we only eat hamburgers and fast food, but we’re not all that way. These farm-to-table concepts exist in many places in America, and I certainly hope they become more widespread so that we can eradicate awful chains such as McDonald’s and instead make organic, local ingredients more affordable by subsidizing local farmers instead of pumping money into fast food chains that are killing our population.

Here are more photos of the food that we enjoyed:

Where To Hike In The Dolomites

It was surprisingly difficult to find websites or blogs with helpful information about specific hikes in the Dolomiti region, so we relied on recommendations from Cristina, and she certainly didn’t steer us wrong! I recommend to just drive around the national park one day and enjoy the pristine mountain views that make you feel as though you are in Switzerland. The access road through the national park is accessible via the town of Belluno. We hiked a total of three days and felt we could have spent an entire week here.

HIKING IN THE DOLOMITES

We did two long day hikes which I will explain in detail below.

1) Rifugio Alpini 7°

Length: 14 kilometers (8.7 miles) round trip
Hiking Level: difficult
Elevation Gain: 1,200 meters (3,600 feet)
Time: Approximately 9 hours (7.5 of hiking, 1.5 of rest at the rifugio)

This hike actually begins from the backyard of our own rifugio, Col di Roanza, and ends up at another rifugio way up high in the mountains. The hike took us 9 hours, including a 20-minute nude dip in a cold swimming hole with turquoise water (a much-needed refreshment from the hot mountain sun), and a 1.5-hour stop at the rifugio once we reached the top. Thank goodness our reward was the rifugio because it was not an easy hike in the August heat.

If you have a rental car, park at Col di Roanza and stop in to say hi to Cristina and use restrooms before you set out on the long journey. The photo below is what you look up at before you start the hike. (Don’t worry, the hike doesn’t bring you to the top of those peaks, but there is a way that you can ascend the summit, however, climbing gear is necessary.) If you have your own gear with you (including a helmet), you can stay overnight at Alpini Rifugio 7° and continue on to summit the peaks the following day.
 

From Col di Roanza Rifugio, start walking down the hill. In less than five minutes you will see a trail on the right side of the road. This is where the hike begins. About 20 minutes into the hike, you will see an awesome bench, which we titled “Bench at the End of the World” (ala Swing at the end of the World in Banos, Ecuador, which we visited at the start of our world travel adventure .)

Very shortly after the bench, you will reach a tunnel that is nearly 1.6 kilometers (one mile) long, so bring a headlamp, flashlight or phone with bright illumination.

The light coming through the tunnel breaks made for some phenomenal silhouette photos.