Woke up to rain and high 40’s temps, so we took it slow (I really can’t imagine we could be taking it any slower but we die) and after breakfast it seemed to be clearing.  Since hiking in the rain in pain is totally out we decided to take the bus to Bolzano and visit the city.  We ended up having to wait for over an hour for the bus, trying to make conversation with the other who were waiting.  Interesting that there are many people here who speak neither English nor Italian but just German and the local language which is called Liden.  One of the other waiters was a woman from Lichtenstein.  And there was an older, husky, working  man who spoke a bit of Italian and managed to tell me the busses are totally off schedule because of road work.  He was wearing a bright blue apron as do a lot of the older country men here.

In Bolzano we strolled and sat a lot. Had a coffee at a very cool wine bar.  I enjoyed all the window shopping and the farmers market. This woman was selling lots of dried and cured meats as well as home made butter and soft cheeses.There are plenty of designer shops and housewares shops and some with Heidi dresses.  

All of the street signs are in both German and Italian. Bought myself one of those blue aprons with pretty mountain flowers embroidered on it.  We went into a beautiful church built for St. Francis filled with stained glass windows and old frescoes.  I liked this big modern gold box in the front.

When it started to rain again we ducked into the nearest little funky caffe and had a sandwich and my personal favorite, salad with Italian canned tuna on it.  It stopped raining and we continued on and finally took the bus back to Castelrotto failing to visit the duomo on the way out. The mountain views were just enough to keep me from freaking out on the narrow road in the big wide bus.

The restaurant we wanted to try for dinner was closed so we went back to Zum Turm (gotta love the name).  We really wanted to try the most typical local food called canederli.  They are translated as dumplings but we both agreed they were a lot like matzo balls except with chunks of smoked ham in them.  We also ate Schnitzel of pork and roasted potatoes and a lovely plate of mixed veggies.

We checked out the computer for our route to Verona, watched an episode of Grace and Frankie and called it a night.