The Dolomites were a bit of a planning challenge. When I first researched our trip, I was confused by all the different areas that were considered the Dolomites. For whatever reason, the names all seemed to overlap and no matter how many blog posts I read, I didn’t feel like I could keep them all straight.

I later learned this is because almost every single trail, mountain, and area has both a German name and an Italian name, and they are usually not similar sounding in the slightest.

Most of the blogs I read seemed to focus on two areas: Val di Funes and Cortina. Another blunder I made on this trip was not planning it early enough in advance. Listen, the Dolomites are a popular hiking haven, and we were planning to visit during peak season as there are really only a few months you can hike without encountering snow, which is a completely different and awe-inspiring trip.

By the time we finally settled down to make hotel arrangements, there weren’t a lot of pet-friendly options left in Val di Funes or Cortina. Mark ended up finding this beautiful, modern chalet that was about 45 minutes north of Val di Funes, so we booked it for the first half of the trip. Cortina had a few more offerings, so we were able to book a chalet within walking distance of the city center. With all of our accommodations booked, it was time to hit the road and spend the next week hiking and enjoying the mountain views.

What to do

We left Stuttgart fairly early to try to avoid traffic. Normally, I don’t plan for us to do much on our travel days since I never know if we’ll be delayed, but we had some overlapping vacation days with some friends so we planned to meet up on a hike on our first evening.

Our friends’ hotel was closer to Val di Funes and they had a check-in deadline, so they started the hike about an hour before we did. We never ended up meeting on the trail, so I’m not sure if they did the same hike we did.

We started out on the hike at about 4 p.m. from the Zannes Car Park. We did the loop clockwise by following trail 6 first, and then transitioning to trails 35 and 28 to stay on the Adolf Munkel Weg.

I had done some light research on this trail before we embarked and was a little nervous that I was going to miss some of these signs. If you do this hike, it is very obvious that you are on the Adolf Munkel Weg and the numbers are almost secondary. You will not get lost; it’s very intuitive.

I loved this little hike. It was so varied in terms of views and I feel like we didn’t have to work overly hard to be surrounded by the beauty of the Dolomites. When we first started the hike, we heard the familiar sounds of the alpine cowbells ringing throughout the valley and wondered if we would see any cows grazing. Towards the middle of the hike, we got our first unobstructed views of the Dolomites while walking across a valley. The valley was covered in fresh cow pies. As we turned the corner, we saw all of them grazing, and they immediately noticed us because of the dogs. As we learned in Interlaken, cows are not the biggest fans of dogs and will often come up to them, or worse, charge them.

Mark took both dogs and hid behind a tree while I snapped a million photos and tried to distract them. Something you should know about grazing alpine cows is that they don’t care about you and what you want to do at all. So we had to wait for a little bit for them to clear off the trail before continuing onward.

About halfway along the route is a rifugio, a little alpine restaurant. Since we started our hike so late in the day, they were already closed. This was unfortunate because at this point in the hike it began to storm. With the rain thundering down upon us, we made our way back to the car probably a little quicker than we would have otherwise. I think we both would have loved to stay maybe just a little later to try to catch the Dolomites in the golden hour light, but this may have proven difficult since it would definitely mean hiking back to the car in the dark. While the route wasn’t overly technical, it definitely was a little rocky and I’m glad we had the light that we did to see where we needed to go.

I don’t know if it was because of the stormy weather or since it was later in the day, but we only ran into a handful of other hikers on this trail. It truly felt like we had the Dolomites all to ourselves. It was the perfect hike to set the tone for the rest of the trip.

Since we failed to meet up with our friends on our first day in the Dolomites, we tried to connect again the following day on a Seceda hike. Since they were doing a multi-country road-trip, this was our last opportunity to see each other.

We started our morning with a jog through the village by our chalet. After quickly showering up, we hit the road. Our friends messaged us as we pulled into the almost full parking lot for the Seceda cable car, that they hit major traffic and would be hiking Sassolungo in the morning instead.

After parking, we took the cable car up to the Seceda Ridgeline. It is entirely possible to do this as a hike, but it will take over two hours and is almost 5 miles one-way. Allegedly, this is the way you must reach the ridgeline if you decide to go to Seceda in the off season when the cable car isn’t running.

Another important point to make about the cable car is that when you buy your ticket you have multiple pricing options. You need to select the uphill and downhill, that is unless you want to walk a very far distance back to your car. On the ride up and down, you get off the cable car at Furnes and transfer to a second car that takes you the remaining way to the ridgeline. I felt like this was fairly straightforward, but the other travelers in our lift didn’t seem to get the memo and I almost had to push the lady out of the lift so that we didn’t get stuck riding back down in one, giant embarrassing circle.

It’s also possible to take dogs on the cable car for an additional 5€, provided that they wear a muzzle. Since our dogs had a fairly big day on the Adolf Munkel Trail, we left them at the chalet for this outing.

Once at the top, we were greeted with more Dolomites moodiness as the clouds swept in and out of view. We hadn’t eaten yet, so we decided to enjoy the view at Restaurant Seceda 2500m - The Highest in Val Gardena right next to the cable car exit. Pro tip: if you eat here, you can use the toilet for free, otherwise you do have to pay a couple of Euros. If you want to walk around a little first, there are a few other huts sprinkled around the ridgeline that I’m sure offer a similar fare.

Unlike the day before, Seceda was decently crowded. Not overwhelmingly so, but we definitely didn’t have it to ourselves. I think this is always the case when you are easily able to access the view. If there’s a decent amount of hiking and elevation to get the view, you usually have less people willing or able to work for it.

After hanging out for a couple of hours, we headed back to our little village so we could go grocery shopping and cook dinner in our chalet. I love vacations where we don’t have to eat out every single meal, and the Dolomites were amazing for this.

If you read any blogs about the Dolomites, Seceda is the hike. Every single one of them mentions Seceda as a cannot miss for the Dolomites. I’ll be honest; it wasn’t my favorite out of all of the hikes we did. That may be because it wasn’t actually much of a hike, or because it did feel very commercialized while some of our other hikes felt a little more wild. It was also the most expensive to do. I’m glad we did it, but if you were short on time, I’m not sure I would put it at the top of the list.

After an easier day previously, I was itching to get some more steps in on our third day in the Dolomites. Many blogs recommend Alpe di Siusi on this day, but after not really loving Seceda and seeing rather mediocre pictures online, I was searching for an alternative in Val Gardena where we could take the dogs with us. Enter the Vallunga Valley.

As the names suggests, Vallunga is a valley, meaning that elevation gain and loss is minimal, which was perfect for our elderly dogs. The parking lot for this hike was on the smaller side, but we didn’t have any issues finding a spot when we got there a little before 1 p.m.

This is a popular starting point for many trails of varying degrees of difficulty in Val Gardena. We made it an out-and-back, turning around when we hit about 2.5 miles in a big, open field filled with more grazing alpine cows.

I loved seeing the alpine cows on all of the hikes, but unfortunately, they don’t always love seeing us. Knowing that the cows can get a little spooked around the dogs, Mark and I always make sure only one of us has the dogs when we know they’re getting near (thanks, farmers, for putting bells on them).

Heading back to the car, we noticed one cow locked on to us a little more than they normally do. Mark started to back away, and that’s when the cow decided to charge him and the dogs! Since we were in the middle of an open valley, there wasn’t really a place for him to hide. I don’t know if this is what you’re supposed to do when a cow is charging you, but that’s what they taught us to do in Alaska if a moose charges. Large beast with limited memory charges = hide behind a tree and wait until they forget what they were doing.

Now, instead of helping in any way, I decided to take snaps of the encounter, as any loving spouse would do when more than half of her family is attacked by cows on vacation. So because of that, you now get to enjoy photographic evidence of the attack. You’re welcome:

Mark and the dogs eventually hopped over a small creek while I made noise and tried to get the cows to come more towards me… or at least forget what they were doing. Eventually, we made it past the two most offended cows, and found ourselves back on track for an uneventful hike back to the car.

We particularly loved this hike, not only because it gave us one of the better stories for the trip, but because we were surrounded by sweeping views of the Dolomites the entire time. While I love a good summit view, there’s something to be said about getting to enjoy the views from the valley floor every once and a while.

This was our last day in our chalet in Rasa before we packed up and headed to Cortina to be closer to Tre Cime and a few other noteworthy hikes. Up until this point, I had been following a seven-day itinerary from Moon and Honey Travel, but since we did the Adolf Munkel trail on our travel day, we had an extra day to play with in the Val Gardena area.

Our friends had already departed from Italy, but before leaving, they recommended that we do Sassolungo, which is the hike they did when we went to Seceda. When I mentioned it to Mark, he did some quick research and found that Sassolungo has a special lift to the top of the mountain called a coffin lift. Basically it holds only two people and you stand the whole way up. We decided that we would take the coffin lift to the top and back down and then do the hike that our friends recommended.

The puppies were due for a recovery day after the 5 mile hike the previous day, which worked out well for the coffin lift. Dogs are allowed on the lift, but I don’t think it would have gone well for us with the whole running and jumping in portion.

The lift comes through fairly quickly and they have you and your lift partner line up successively so that you can run and jump into the lift one after the other. Of course my anxiety was running high at this point, so I was the first on and off each time we did it. If we would have brought the dogs, I don’t think we could have gotten them to understand that they needed to run and jump quickly.

Much like Seceda, if you don’t want to do the coffin lift, you can do a circuit hike that’s a little over 5 miles (8.4 km), but it is more of an expert hike. Some hikers take the lift to the top and then try to hike the rest of the circuit which results in many mountain rescues since they are out-hiking their abilities. All this to say, know your limit. There are plenty of other hikes in Sassolungo that are just as beautiful and much easier, like the one we did after taking the coffin lift!

At the top of the Forcella lift, there is a rifugio, so we had our first meal of the day there around noon. Before our trip to the Dolomites, I hadn’t realized that polenta was such an Italian dish, but I was happy to have multiple servings of it covered with Bergkäse (mountain cheese) from all of the alpine cows that we were passing by on our hikes.

After riding the coffin car back down the mountain, we started on our hike by following the 557 trail signs. You could make this a circuit if you wanted to hike about 11 miles (18 km), which we did not. Like our friends, our plan was to hike to a few of the rifugios and turn around when we were ready to head back to the car.

Most of the elevation for the hike was right in the beginning, but it was a completely paved path so I wouldn’t call it overly challenging. The views on this trail were absolutely incredible, but as we started to near the first rifugio, the weather moved in and began raining and hailing. Mark and I took a pause, waiting out the weather with coffee and apple cake. I think we both wanted to continue onward, but unfortunately, it looked like the weather was going to get caught in the mountains.

We made a break for it, and made it almost the entire way back to the car before it started hailing again. Luckily, it was only for about 10 minutes and we made it to the car and out of the parking lot just as a downpour started, which is how it remained for the rest of the day. Hanging our clothes up to dry, we spent the evening watching the storm on our balcony and relaxing in our chalet’s sauna.

If you know me, you know that when I travel (and I guess with life in general) I tend to cram an activity into every hour of every day, much to my family’s chagrin. Since we had already put in a decent amount of mileage and it was time to move hotels, I agreed to a rest day. We checked out of our chalet, and walked around the neighboring town of Brixen, essentially killing time between checkout and check-in.

Brixen was a cute little town and was fun to walk around, but it’s not something you should go out of your way to see. We did have amazing gelato at Eisdiele Pradetto, so if you do find yourself in Brixen, you must absolutely stop here.

When I was initially planning our trip, I wasn’t really sure switching hotels was necessary since Tre Cime wasn’t that much further from some of the hikes we planned in Val Gardena. In hindsight, I am glad we made this decision because even though the towns were only 60 miles apart, they had completely different vibes.

In Val Gardena, we spoke German at almost every restaurant and with our hotel. Almost all of the signs and menus were in German, followed by English and then Italian. When we arrived in Cortina, we noticed almost everything was the exact opposite and now all of the signs and menus were in Italian.

Another difference we noticed was that the mountains looked significantly different. In Val Gardena, everything was a rocky gray color, while in Cortina the mountains took on more of a red and orange hue.

After we settled into our new chalet, we went grocery shopping one last time, and rested up for our big day at Tre Cime the following morning.

Out of all of the hikes we did, this was the one. I remember when we first learned we would be moving to Germany, we started pinning places we wanted to visit on a shared Google Map. Tre Cime was one of the pins, so it felt surreal to finally see it in person and not just on my phone screen.

Having dealt with the tight and winding roads for almost a week at this point, Mark researched public transit options for Tre Cime. Since this is one of the biggest destinations in the Dolomites, taking a bus from Cortina is fairly easy to do. There was a little bit of confusion at the bus station as to whether or not we were on the correct bus, but the bus driver assured us (and countless other passengers) that he was heading to Tre Cime.

Much like the rest of our Dolomites trip, Tre Cime was cloudy and moody the day that we visited. I think this ended up adding incredible depth to our photos, so I’m not unhappy about it. It was also a little on the cool side since Tre Cime is at a much higher elevation. I wore a smart wool thermal base and my thick Jack Wolfskin jacket and still managed to lose circulation in my hands when we stopped to eat.

This loop has three rifugios along it and we ended up stopping at all three. We made it to the first hut around 10 a.m. and had a coffee break as they were just opening for the day. The second hut served up some mean pasta, and I’m sad we skipped dessert since the apple strudel looked incredible. At the third hut, we had an afternoon coffee and dessert (unfortunately, apple strudel wasn’t on the menu but the apple and cranberry poppy cakes were still delightful).

I loved this hike and I can see why it is so popular. It really is one of the best in the area and because of this, it was one of the busier hikes we did. Since we were still about two weeks ahead of peak season and the weather wasn’t bright and sunny, it wasn’t overly crowded.

If you do decide to drive to this hike instead of taking the bus, plan on getting there early as the parking lot at Rifugio Auronzo fills up fast. Many of the blogs I used to research this trip recommended arriving at the parking lot around 7 or 8 a.m. to avoid waiting in line. Additionally, you have to pay a toll to drive on Tre Cime road, which is another reason we took the bus.

We heavily debated what to do on our last day in the Dolomites. There are a handful of beautiful turquoise lakes near Cortina and I wanted to make sure we had at least one on our itinerary, despite probably having seen a similar view at Lake Bled just a couple of weeks prior.

Initially, I had planned for us to go to Lago Di Braies, but as our adventure day approached, I was a little more apprehensive about visiting. Many of the blogs I had read suggested skipping Braies in high season, saying it would be too crowded and not enjoyable.

So then I started researching Lago Di Sorapis, another turquoise lake in the area. Unlike Lago Di Braies, Sorapis is a crushing 8.3 mile (13.5 km) hike with more than 2,000 ft (725 m) of elevation gain. It’s rated as a moderate to hard hike, but I knew this would make it less crowded than Lago Di Braies’ family-friendly walking path. Mark and I had agreed this would be the way to go, until the morning of finally rolled around.

Our legs were pretty spent after averaging 5-6 miles of hiking every day, plus a few jogs in the village. Also, we wanted to bring the puppies with us since they had stayed at home the previous day and there was no way they would make the Lago Di Sorapis hike. So we decided to get to Lago Di Braies fairly early (by European standards) and see if we could beat the crowd. Spoiler alert: this was absolutely the correct call.

We arrived at Braies around 8:30 a.m. and pretty much had our choice of parking spots. There are multiple lots around Braies and we ended up parking at one of the lots (Lot 2) that was a little bit further from the lake. We had to walk about a half mile (800 m) to the lake. This actually ended up being a brilliant idea since we were able to easily exit in the afternoon once the lake was starting to get extremely busy.

Since it was earlier in the day, the lake wasn’t crowded at all. By no means did we have it to ourselves, but we were able to get plenty of great pictures without a million people in them. The loop around the lake was beautiful and a mostly flat 3 miles (5 km).

My favorite part about this hike is that the puppies got to swim! On the beach across from the main parking lot where the WC are located (which were no-cost by the way), we saw a few other dogs running and swimming in the water. As a good dog mom, I always have a tennis ball on me, so our pups were able to cool off in the water. They were so excited.

This brought us to lunchtime, and I found a little rifugio near the beginning of a difficult hike that connected to Lago Di Braies. I love this about the Dolomites. There are trails literally everywhere and you can make your day as easy or difficult as you want it to be. The side hike was called Malga Foresta and we stopped at Grunwaldalm Zum Hartl, where I got one of the best apple strudels with vanilla bean sauce that I’ve ever had.

When we got back to our car a little after noon, there was a gigantic line to get into the parking lot closest to the lake and ours was completely full. So if you are interested in this hike, earlier is way better.

Since we cooked a majority of our meals in the Dolomites to save a little money, I don’t have as many restaurant suggestions as I typically do. Usually when we had a meal outside of our cozy chalet, it was along a trail at one of the many rifugios. If this is your plan while visiting the Dolomites, here are some of the local flavors that you should try!

• Alpine cheese: all of the cows you’ll be hiking past are in the process of making delicious alp cheese. The whole reason the cows graze high in the mountains during the summer months is so that they have a more varied diet than if they were kept in a pasture. This results in an earthy, rich cheese that has a unique flavor all its own. This was a pretty big portion of our grocery shopping budget as well.

• Polenta: Before our trip, I didn’t realize that polenta is actually from Italy and not South America; Italian immigrants introduced polenta to Brazilians in the 19th century. This was on almost every rifugio menu and was usually smothered in alp cheese and a mushroom gravy sauce and served with a side of Austrian-style sausage. It’s cool that you can see how much the border proximity influences the food.

• Apple strudel with vanilla sauce: Here is another dish that’s coming from the nearby border, but it makes the perfect sweet treat with your mid-hike coffee. Always opt for the vanilla sauce if they offer it.

• Eisdiele Pradetto: Like I said above, if you find yourself near Brixen, stop by this gelato shop. It is absolutely heavenly and I’m not 100 percent sure, but I believe it is a crime to not get gelato in Italy in the summer. So keep yourself safe.

• Book your accommodations early

  As I mentioned, the Dolomites are an alpine hiker’s dream, which means hotels and Airbnbs book months in advance. If you’re visiting anytime in June through September, lock in your accommodations at least a couple of months in advance if possible, otherwise you may be paying more for a room than you initially budgeted.

• You really need wheels

  Something we’ve loved about living in Europe is that there is transit everywhere, except for the Dolomites. All of the mountains you’re there to see and hike make driving anywhere a slow endeavor. The roads are winding, hugging the mountains, ascending and descending rapidly, which brings me to my next point.

• Beware of bikers

  It’s not just the alpine hikers who love the Dolomites; bicyclist spend days riding up and down the mountain roads. Since the roads are narrow and winding, keep the speed limit since you don’t know who or what is right around the corner.

• Layers, all of the layers

  In early July, it was already fairly warm during the day in most of the towns. As soon as we hit the trails though, the temperatures plummeted. The day we hiked Tre Cime was in the mid-50s. If you’re planning on hiking, don’t forget to pack layers with you. And make sure they’re waterproof!

• Watch the forecast

  Not only are temps variable, the clouds brought rain almost every single day, covering the peaks, and therefore, the view. Each night we checked the forecast for the next day. Sometimes this meant we hiked in the morning before the afternoon storms, and other times it meant we started on the trails in the afternoon, waiting out the morning showers. We also ended up swapping around multiple days so we had better photo ops.

• Enjoy the day at the rifugios

  You’ll see the rifugios sprinkled along almost every single hike. I think American hiking culture has it all wrong. You work hard to get to the summit, chill for a bit, and head back to the car. Not in Europe, and especially not in the Dolomites. The rifugios served up some of the best food we had on the trip, plus you have incredible views the entire time.

• Bring the pets

  The Dolomites were one of the most pet-friendly vacations we’ve had. Dogs were allowed on all of the cable cars, though by law, they must wear a muzzle. We took the dogs on some of the easier hikes since they are getting older, but would have taken them on all of the hikes if they still would have been in their prime. Every hike we did was dog friendly as long as they were on a leash.

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