First, a bridge, then a mountain pass, then a jagged mountain range...this was not your regular long drive.
Our trip from Innsbruck, Austria to Verona, Italy was indeed thrilling.
We traversed the Europabrücke (Europa Bridge). At 192 meters above ground, it is one of the highest bridges in Europe. It is 777 meters long, stretching across the 657-meter Wipp Valley above the Sill River. The views below and around were amazing, though some older members of our tour group closed their eyes while we were crossing.
At the Austrian-Italian border, we travelled through the Brenner Pass, a mountain pass through the Alps, said to be the lowest at 1,375 meters, but still scary enough for some of my travel companions. We followed the Adige River through spectacular scenery, down to the great plain of Alto Adige (South Tyrol), an autonomous province in Northern Italy. This has long been an area of dispute between Austria and Italy.
Alto Adige is officially an Italian territory, having been a war prize from Nazi Germany to Fascist Italy in World War II, but majority of the population is of Austro-Bavarian heritage and speaks German. Only about a quarter of them speak Italian and they are concentrated in the two largest cities of Bolzano and Merano. A few speak the native tongue Ladin in the eastern valleys. It is an area of contrast between the Alpine staidness and the Italian joie-de-vivre, producing a unique mixture.
But aside from the cultural melding, there is also the diversity of its landscape of high mountains and their valleys. The best-known parts of the Tyrolean Alps are the Dolomites, a mountain range in northeastern Italy made of light-coloured limestone, which erosion has carved into grotesque shapes, forming jagged ridges, rocky pinnacles, and deep gorges. They are often referred to as the “Pale Mountains,” a nickname that obviously comes from the colour of the carbonate minerals that make them up.
Very few people are aware that the world famous mountain range has "little sisters." They are called Piccole Dolomiti (Little Dolomites) and are located between the provinces of Trentino, Verona, and Vicenza. As we were heading to Verona that time, this was what we saw and photographed. This range is lower and less jagged than their "big sisters," but nevertheless formidable. During the First World War, these mountains represented the frontline between Austria and Italy.
There are lots of resort towns and villages around the Dolomite Mountains, but since we were just passing through, we were only able to take photos of them when we stopped for gas. However, the pictures we took at the gas station were as bad as the ones we took from the bus.
"We have to go back there one day," my husband said.. And I replied, "It's already on the list!"
Photo Credits:
iru.org, highestbridges.com, irishtimes.com, britannica.com, antoniobassetti.wordpress.com, volpidelvajolet.it
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