More cowbell!

Cyndie and I settled in a town called Ortisei for the night. We had absolutely no plan on where to stay so we just started asking hotels "quanto custo?" which means how much. Most of the three star hotels (bottom of the barrel around here) were about 80 euro for one night. Thats about a hundred bucks a night. Sounded like a bargain compared to a holiday inn. We finally said "i guess that one". This is the view from our balcony.



We lucked out big time with our hotel too cause the front desk lady was super helpful and we really needed some help. We basically had no more than a name for the hut and a neighboring town. We found out we missed the only bus to that town early this morning. This turned out to be a good thing. The front desk blessing showed us another hut that was much more on the possible scale and she said the views were more spectacular from this side of the mountain anyways and she said we could keep our big bags at the hotel even if we weren't planning on staying here again. This was fantastic cause we didn't want to lug our full packs up to the hut. We also dropped some stuff off at the laundry service. The only one in town was not self service and won't be done till tomorrow. All good things cause we didn't want to deal with it and this gives us more time to play. Not to mention my bag was starting to smell like a rotting corpse and that's no exaggeration. I feel sorry for that lady.

We took our small packs, the clothes we had on, and some croissants we grabbed at the hotel breakfast and headed for the hut almost 4000ft higher than where our hotel was. To get to the trailhead we had to hop on a bus to the next town and take a cable car up 2000ft. We arrived here.



This area is probably the prettiest country my two eyes have ever seen. We got off the lift and grabbed some lunch at restaurant that was right there. I wish I had a photo on my iPhone to show you here of where I sat for lunch. Some random old German guy came up to Cyndie and I and wanted a picture of us. I told Cyndie he just wanted a picture of her.
Our trail went straight over this mountain.



We hiked and hiked and hiked some more. It took us about 4hours to reach the hut. The trails were very steep at times, almost hands and feet climbing. Very jagged rocky terrain screams ibuprofen for this tenderfoot.


We laid down in a meadow to take a nap and I could see two paragliders way up in the clouds. Guess I know what we'll do tomorrow.



We finally made it to the hut. There were bunnies running around, sheep, and chickens. It was really neat but there was one problem. We got there much earlier than we expected and we would have just sat around the rest of the afternoon. That wasn't sitting very well for these two ADD kids that saw mountain bike rentals down in town, and that hot tub was sounding pretty good by now. We bailed on the hut and booked it back down a different route to town (a much longer hike than expected).


Got back to our three star refuge by catching the last bus back once we got off the mountain. We had dinner at our hotel tonight and ate tons of food. We were surrounded by senior citizens and they were all staring at us. I felt like I should be playing bridge. We're going to sleep in and try to paraglide or mountain bike tomorrow. My feet hurt so bad I could barely stand in the shower. Better get some rest so we can attack tomorrow. Everyday is an adventure!

Location:Stufan Strasse,Urtijëi,Italy