mostly photos and a few words about what we are doing, seeing, eating, and everything else in between... 08/04/2024 - 8/10/2024
While our knees were enjoying their recovery, we took the day to explore Corvara by bike.All smiles going up, and maybe one tear from Makenna going down.Makenna felt energized after the bike ride so she grabbed Tyler's yoga mats & exercise bands for a quick workout. Little did we know this was the last use of the yoga mat for the rest of the year.It was time to start hiking again. Before we kicked off a new day in Selva di Val Gardena, Tyler made a long awaited purchase - sports mode sunglasses.Enjoyed an easy hike and came across a lot of cows who shared heavy eye contact with us hikers.Rewarded our efforts with kaiserschmarrn, a dish Makenna's family traditionally makes during the holidays.And of course, we are in Italy, so we had gelato as well.We took some time to enjoy the sauna and spa at our hotel and could only imagine what winter would look like.Want to find the best air conditioning in Italy? It is in this old WW1 tunnel in Santa Cristina. (this joke ages poorly over the next week)On our last full day in the Dolomites we tackled our biggest hike - a one way trek from Resciesa to Seceda. Why did we think posing in the log would be a good idea?Not even half way, but spirits were high, Makenna was singing the sound of music while gathering flowers, and we could see the back side of Seceda Tyler was doing a push up challenge with his friend, shoutout to Vivek, and he took the steep mountain incline his advantage - it may appear flat but the photo was rotated about 60 degrees.The hike was long and Makenna was not having it, but Tyler found some heart rocks along the way to keep spirits high.We are serious, the hike was never ending and just kept going up. Underprepared, one again.See the ridge line intersecting with Tyler's left ear - follow it to the path line cutting across the mountain and that was where the field filled with high spirits was.I guess because we didn't look at a map, or Alltrails, we didn't think Seceda would be that far away but we were wrong. We not only had to climb along the valley of the ridge line and up a mountain, but now back down the mountain and across valley line again to hit the viewpoint.We started our hike around 10 am and around 5 pm Makenna remembered that the ski lifts stop in the evening. For the next hour, we booked it along the trail practically running the last 15 minutes. The lift closed at 6 pm and we made it there with 5 minutes to spare; this is our only photo of the viewpoint, which wasn't even really the viewpoint. We definitely worked harder not smarter on this one.What a way to wrap the Dolomites. The next day we drove back to Venice and said hello to a new city!We quickly got hit with the humidity of summer in Venice, but the sunset didn't disappoint.Exploring the canals in Venice for the first time made it easy to get lost and to appreciate the uniqueness of this city.And while the Dolomites had some great hiking, we were ready to feast on some delicious pasta.We are tourist...of course we took a gondola ride that was 20 minutes and cost us 80 euros.Look how happy we are! I think it's because we found some shade.And gelato had to get consumed at record rates since it would melt the second it left the air conditioned store.
