My First Trip to the Dolomites: How It Changed Everything

My first trip to the Dolomites was supposed to last one week. Daragh and I planned to spend a week exploring the mountains before driving on to Lake Garda.

That was 2010.

We never made it to Lake Garda.

We Planned One Week in the Dolomites

Daragh and I had booked a garni in Santa Cristina, a small village in Val Gardena that I had found after a considerable amount of searching. There was not much information available in English back then. The Dolomites were not yet on every travel list. You had to work a little harder to find them, and once you arrived, you had to work a little harder to navigate them too.

The road signs confused us immediately. They appeared in three languages — Italian, German, and Ladin — and we had no idea why. We did not yet know that Val Gardena sits in South Tyrol, a region with a layered history and a culture that belongs equally to the Italian Alps and the Germanic world. We just knew the signs did not match what we expected, and that we were not entirely sure where we were going.

English was not widely spoken. We managed, but it required more patience and more gesturing than either of us was used to. These days the valley is well set up for international visitors. In 2010 it felt like somewhere that had not quite adjusted to the idea of being discovered yet.

Looking back, I'm glad we chose Val Gardena for that first trip. It's still one of the places I recommend most often to first-time visitors because it offers easy access to so many of the Dolomites' highlights. If you're still deciding where to stay, my guide on choosing the best base in the Dolomites may help.

The Day Seceda Changed Everything

On one of our first days, Daragh suggested we take the Seceda cable car. He had looked at the map and was convinced it would be spectacular. I was less sure. The cable car itself was unimpressive from the outside, and the lower section of the ride offered nothing particularly dramatic. I remember thinking we were heading up to look at a patch of grass.

I was wrong.

When the top station came into view and we stepped out onto the ridge, I did not say anything for a while. The Odle group rose directly in front of us, a wall of pale rock so vertical and so close that it seemed almost theatrical. The valley dropped away below. The path along the ridge stretched in both directions with no particular end in sight.

It was one of those moments where your sense of scale recalibrates entirely and you realise you had been thinking about the place in completely the wrong terms.

Daragh did not say, "I told you so."

He did not need to.

Today, Seceda is one of the most photographed places in the Dolomites, but nothing compares to seeing it for the first time.

Summer Snow on Alpe di Siusi

We spent a night up on Alpe di Siusi that first trip, staying in one of the small guesthouses on the plateau. We went to bed in clear weather and woke up to snow.

In summer.

The plateau was white and completely silent, and the mountains around it were sharper than they had been the day before. We had not packed for snow.

We did not care.

It remains one of the most memorable mornings I've ever experienced in the Dolomites and a reminder that mountain weather can change incredibly quickly. If Alpe di Siusi is on your itinerary, you'll find plenty more tips in my Alpe di Siusi guide.

One Week Became Two

We had brought cameras — real ones, with memory cards and batteries we had to manage carefully. Not phones. The photos from that trip are locked away on old laptops and backup drives that I have not opened in years.

I have fewer images from 2010 than from any trip since, which means most of what I remember from that first visit exists only as memory.

Somehow that feels right.

At the end of the week, we were supposed to drive to Lake Garda.

We looked at each other and simply did not want to leave.

Daragh found availability at the Adler in Ortisei. We checked in the next morning and stayed for another week.

We have been coming back every year since.

Ortisei remains one of my favourite bases in the Dolomites and one I recommend regularly for first-time visitors.

Sixteen Years Later

I did not know in 2010 that the Dolomites would become the centre of my professional life as well as one of my favourite places on earth.

I did not know I would spend the next seventeen years learning this region in enough depth to help other people plan their own first trips.

I just knew, somewhere in that second week, that one visit was never going to be enough.

Sixteen years later, that feeling hasn't changed.

And if you'd like personalised help planning your itinerary, you can learn more about my Dolomites trip planning services here.