On Wednesday we decided to have a fairly low-key day. We needed to get groceries, go to Decathlon to get ski gear (again) and run a few errands.
After an uneventful day at a shopping center in Bolzano, we went to an Austrian restaurant for dinner. We had just gotten in the car when we noticed it was snowing! We headed back to our apartment as quickly as possible and the kids raced out to experience their first snowfall ever.
It was very light snow so we didn’t expect there to be much left the next day. We were pretty surprised to see a good inch of fresh snow covering everything in the morning. Audrey was thrilled to try out her new Decathlon ski suit.
Even if it was just in the car park.
The day before we had realised that ‘Ötzi The Iceman’, a 5000-year-old man that was discovered in the 90s by some hikers in the Dolomites (and that Hayley had studied in history class) was kept on display in Bolzano. We cleared off the car and headed into town to check it out.
The exhibit was actually really good, with the original mummy (which totally freaked out the kids) kept in a temperature-controlled room behind a tiny viewing window.
They also had other belongings found at the site as well as a recreation of what he might have looked like.
After our token educational visit we headed to Brixen, a little town about 45 minutes north of Bolzano to eat more strudel and drink more alcoholic drinks before lunch. The impetus behind these whole two weeks on the road was for Mandi to experience a white Christmas, so it was amazing that it worked out so well. Brixen was like a postcard.
We wandered around the Christmas market and explored the grounds of the beautiful old church.
And spent more time playing in and with the snow.
Then we got back in the car and headed further north to Vipiteno, just 16km from the Austrian border.
We decided we needed to share a white hot chocolate to give us energy for more Christmas markets.
After we reached market saturation we managed to find a couple of playgrounds nearby.
No locals were crazy enough to be in a playground in -2 degrees. We were.
As the sun started to set it got even colder so we called it a day and headed back to Bolzano to get a good night sleep for the long drive to Bormio.
