Visit to the Italian Dolomites

Today we had another super trip in gorgeous weather. This time we headed off to the Italian Dolomites, a region of Northern Italy which was part of Austria until the end of the First World War.

As a consequence of the history, the majority of the population of this part of Italy have German as their first language. The other main language is Italian although a small number (the Ladin people, a specific ethnic group) primarily speak Ladin (not to be confused with Ladino!); Ladin is a Romance language with similarities to Swiss Romansh. Our guide told us that, by law, German-speaking children in this region have to learn Italian at school and vice versa, although for a few years recently they all learnt English as their second language until this was pronounced illegal. Gosh!

Anyway, today's trip was fabulous. The highlight had to be a trip up the cable car at one of the mountain passes (the Pass Pordoi) which rises to 3,000 metres. The main blip is one of the many photos I took at the top: even though it's now late May there was still lots of snow around as you can see. The scene was very reminiscent of the trip we had on the photo holiday in the Canadian Rockies last September when we went up Whistlers Mountain at Jasper (see my blip here).

(Please view the photo large, against black, if you've time.)

On the way there we visited the town of Ortisei, which is very picturesque as you can see from the first extra. The second extra amused me - it was taken outside a shop selling masses of intricate wood carvings (where my Editor bought a cute little angel to add to her collection thereof). If blipper Shutterup reads this, she'll probably agree with me that the little dog looks remarkably like her lovely little dog Flossie!