From Gondolas in Venice to Row Boats in the Dolomites

While studying abroad, I put together a list of places that I wanted to visit within Italy – my top destination being the Dolomites. I had unknowingly collected photos of the Dolomites on my pinterest boards over the years, and when I realized the mountains were in Italy, I knew I had to plan a trip. Getting to the Dolomites was a tricky feat, and we decided to stop for a night in Venice to see two places in one weekend.

📍Florence → 📍Venice

We walked from our apartment to the Santa Maria Novella Train Station in Florence where we boarded a train to Venice at 4:30. I had heard that the European railway system is more advanced than the U.S., and it’s definitely true. Navigating the train station and buying tickets was a fairly seamless process, and we had no problems getting from one destination to the next. After a quick two hours, we arrived in Venice at 6:30, still without a confirmed place to stay (we were winging it). We were super hungry, so we walked away from the main canal because we heard a lot of the restaurants lining the canal are “inauthentic,” and ended up at a small restaurant that had a yummy menu. I got a spaghetti dish that had a spicy kick to it, but it was really good. We ended up booking our hotel for the night at Foresteria Valdese while we were eating.

View From the Hotel

We were lugging our bags through the city, so we decided to go drop them off at the hotel before we did anything else that night. On our way to the hotel, we stopped at a self - serve candy store and filled up a bag of candy (Italian candy is delicious!). We made it to the hotel and had a mini heart attack when no one was at the reception to check us in; we thought that we were going to be stranded in Venice and started walking around looking for someone. To our luck someone eventually came down and checked us in, and then we were all set. Our room overlooked one of the canals and was pretty affordable for a one night stay. We found out some friends from school were also in Venice and decided to meet up with them for the evening. We walked to the Bra Bar (yes, you read that right). We spent a few hours with friends just catching up at the bar and met some other study abroad students from Madrid. It was so nice being able to meet new people, and the bar staff were so friendly – they even gave us aux. We got back to the hotel around midnight and snacked on our candy before dozing off for a long day of travel the next day.

We woke up bright and early at 7:00 and wanted to check out for the day and head towards the main canal, but reception didn’t open until 8:30 so we brought our bags back up to our room and set out to find breakfast. My roommate + travel buddy, Ryan, is gluten free, so we always take on the challenge of finding restaurants that are accommodating for food restrictions. Unfortunately, we were struggling to find a breakfast place and walked around the hotel looking for a cafe, but after checking three different ones, we decided we would have better luck near the main canal. We killed an hour and a half by walking around, so we were able to check out and walked to La Lista Bistro which had some GF options. Once again we had to carry our bags up and over several bridges which was not fun, so definitely pack light or have a plan for storage if you plan to do a lot of walking around. For breakfast I had the most delicious nutella and banana pancakes and Ryan had peanut butter banana toast.

We really wanted to go on one of the iconic gondolas, but we were worried we would not be allowed to bring our luggage on board so we stored our bags at the train station for only €6 and then got to walk hands-free which was a relief. We found a gondola company pretty quickly along the main canal and found it at a good time because we got to have the entire boat to ourselves. We enjoyed a private ride through some of the back canals of Venice which was incredibly peaceful. Our gondolier had been steering gondolas since he was a child and the business was passed onto him by his father. The ride lasted around 30 minutes and was a pricey €80, but we think it was worth it – it especially felt good knowing it was going to a family-run business.

📍Venice → 📍Dolomites

We still had plenty of time before our train to the Dolomites, so we decided to do some shopping. We stopped in one of the classic Venice glass shops and bought some very cute glass animals to bring home to the family. There were dozens of small boutiques as well, and though we didn’t stop in every one, we lucked out with some nice clothing purchases in a few. We were still content from breakfast, but we knew that we had to get lunch before our train ride, so we went to a place that had GF pasta – I had a pesto pasta which was tasty and would hold me over until we got to the Dolomites.

We picked up our luggage and boarded our train around 2:00 and got ready for the 6 hour journey ahead of us. I absolutely love trains because I can be productive while traveling (or take a nap) and I didn’t mind the long trip. We transferred to two different trains during the ride, and we arrived at the Dobaccio/Toblach station round 8:00. From the station we walked around 10 minutes to our hotel: Hotel Tschurtschenthaler. Check-in was very smooth and the woman at the front desk was incredibly helpful and helped us find proper transportation for our adventure the next day. We originally planned to go to a famous GF pizza place that was less than 10 minutes from our hotel, but they were insanely busy and could not take any more guests. It seemed like a small town so we were nervous we were not going to be able to find a place, but totally lucked out and found a place in the center of town called Ariston. This place was one of my favorite restaurants – the atmosphere was so nice. I was a disgrace to the Italian community and ordered a ham + cheese (Hawaiian) pizza, and Ryan got a pizza with GF dough. We also treated ourselves to sundaes which really put the cherry on top (no pun intended) for how much we loved this restaurant. We went back to the hotel with food comas and went straight to bed.

After another 7:00 wakeup, we got ready to go to the destination we were looking forward to most: Lago di Braies. We checked out, left our luggage at the front desk, and grabbed a banana and croissant for the road from the hotel breakfast and waited outside of the hotel for a bus that would take us directly to the lake. When we arrived in Debaccio, it was dark so we didn’t have a chance to take in how beautiful the town and surrounding mountains were, and we were in awe the second we stepped outside. It’s truly a beautiful place and I can only imagine the town is something straight out of a hallmark movie with the snow.

outside of the hotel

inside the hotel

from the balcony

The bus came right on time at 8:00, and it cost a total of €10 for two one-way tickets. The bus takes cash only so make sure you have some change (we ran into this problem later). The bus ride only took about 20 minutes and we got dropped off right near the entrance of the lake. I’ll never forget walking up to that lake for the first time – it actually looked like the photos online (I thought I would be let down by intense photoshop editing online). The water was a beautiful turquoise, the rowboats were aligned in the water and had stunning reflections, and the mountains looked like they were covered in snow. We stood for a minute or two and just took it all in. We arrived early enough so we were one of the first people there which added to how incredible the view was – we didn’t have to fight out way through crowds or stand in any lines. Pretty soon we grabbed our camera gear and started taking some of my favorite photos that I’ve taken to this day. I also had to get that * classic * Instagram picture that will definitely be featured on my family Christmas Card. If I had packed the proper gear, I would have loved to go on a hike around the base of the lake which many others did while we were there; our visit was in late October and it was 37° F, we were freezing!! Right around 9:30, the rowboats were available for use and we were the first ones out on the boats. We got to row through the beautiful, blue water and just float while surrounded by such a surreal view. The cost for the boat for an hour was €29 which was not bad split between two people. After rowing around, we needed to warm up and walked over to a small pop-up cafe which had some fire pits set up out front. We warmed up and then took some more photos of the lake, and then caught a bus back to the hotel around 10:30. We ran into an issue where we didn’t think we had €10 for the way back, but luckily we both had enough spare change to meet the amount.

📍Dolomites →📍Florence

Once we were back at the hotel, we got lunch again at Ariston – I got spaghetti carbonara which was an Italian dish I really wanted to try.

Then, we went back to the hotel and did some editing (and napping) in the lobby until it was time to walk back to the train station. On the way we stopped and got some gelato (because why not?) and caught our train headed back to Florence at 3:00. We had 2 changes and got back to Florence station at 8:30 – we had a productive 5 hours going through photos on the train ride. It was a very quick, weekend trip, but we were able to cross several things off of our Italy bucket list in a span of three days! Lago di Braies is still one of my greatest highlights of my entire 3 months spent in Italy, and we only spent 2 hours there – I can’t wait to visit the Dolomites again in the future!