If you would like to see details about our journey, check out our itinerary and our bike route.
Okay, this was definitely going to be a day of rest. I had been just waiting for a day when I didn't need to get out of bed, and Ken would bring me unlimited cups of coffee and plates of food, and the clothes would magically wash themselves and the blog would write itself, and...
About the time Ken brought me a second cup of coffee, we started to hear loud music, yelling, and banging in the little square outside our apartment. As the commotion intensified, we cautiously peeked out our open windows to see several groups of young men, with more moving in from the side streets. Within minutes, there was a huge crowd, surrounded by more young people with their phones out taking videos and photos, the guys singing and chanting and yelling, and shooting off flares and fireworks. Our apartment started filling with smoke; we quietly closed the windows and backed away from them.
A few minutes later, police moved in and the crowd dispersed.
We looked all over social media but couldn't find out what was going.
Excitement over, we crawled back into bed for a little more rest before venturing out to explore Bolzano in the afternoon.
Surprisingly, the city was calmer, the crowds smaller, friendlier. We walked through a church. We found an outdoor market and bought vegetables for dinner. We found a cake shop and bought decadent cookies for dessert. We stopped at a cafe and had cappuccini and cornetti. We joined the shoppers and walked through a big sportswear store, checking out the Dolomiti brand Salewa, the Italian version of Arc'teryx, makers of mountain clothing.
Back at the apartment, we cooked up our pasta and vegetables, poured a glass of wine (me) and juice with sparkling water (Ken), and toasted a quiet end to the first of our restful stays.
 |
| The Chiesa di San Giovanni is a small church built at the start of the 14th century. |
 |
| Piazza Walther. |
 |
| Duomo di Bolzano, dedicated to the Assumption of Mary. |
 |
| We bought eiscreme from a German vendor. Bolzano is more Italian than the villages up near the border in the Dolomiti, but still within the Sudtirol, with a mix of Italian and German cultures, languages, cuisines. |
 |
| The streets of Bolzano were still busy, but the atmosphere had shifted. People seemed friendlier, there appeared to be more locals, not the hoards of pushy groups hauling bags of shopping. |
