Alps Roadtrip: Germany, Austria, and Italy

At the start of August, Kaz, Mark, Nakul and I met in Munich to do a week-long road trip circling the Alps. After 2000 km of driving through 4 countries, we had a great trip—and a great chance to reconnect with friends who I hadn’t seen in over a year! This post will share the first half of our trip encompassing parts of the Bavarian Alps in Germany, the Hohe Tauern in Austria, and the Dolomites in Italy.

Here is a map of the full route, though we did take some unplanned detours

The first day we met in Munich and went south directly into the Bavarian Alps. These would be the smallest mountains we would encounter. Bavaria is a wonderful place, though, with delicious food and beer. It helped that is was a bright, sunny day, too. We did a little bit of sight seeing, stopping at Neuschwanstein Castle which is said to be the inspiration for Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty castle. It was smaller than I expected, and crowded with summer tourists. We were glad to leave them behind for the peacefulness of smaller Bavarian towns and forests on the way east towards Austria.

Once into Austria, we encountered our first pass. A pass is basically a high altitude alpine road which takes you from one valley to the next. Since its not possible to stay in one valley or take a tunnel underneath a mountain, driving through the passes was a necessity on this trip. Some of the roads were of good quality and we felt safe driving at 3000 m above sea level. Others…well, not so much. They do offer a good opportunity to have spectacular scenery, though.

We ended up only staying in Austria for one day, opting instead to spend a few days in the Dolomites located in Northern Italy. This mountain range is famous for their martian appearance and their tall, spiked rock formations. It is stunning to see this in person, but I hope the pictures can do them some justice. Another great part of spending more time in Italy is that the food continues to be some of the freshest, tastiest, and most affordable in Europe.

Below are some pictures I took along the way. Enjoy!