Day 14 – Our Move To Castelrotto

Feb 18, 2023

Today’s Adventure

On Saturday Cindy and I relocated to Castelrotto, a quick train trip that took us about 60 miles southwest of Innichen. We left on a Südtirolmobil train that left the Bahnhof in Innichen at 8:50 AM. Our apartment at the Zin Senfter wasn’t terribly far from the Bahnhof but it was far enough to warrant a taxi ride with full packs and two large roller duffels. This train originated in Innichen due to our location just inside the Italian border with Austria so we had the train mostly to ourselves when we first boarded. As expected we picked up more passengers at each stop until our eventual arrival in Fortezza at 9:40 AM.

At Fortezza we made a smooth connection with a Trenitalia regional train that was headed towards Meran. We got off of this train at the Bahnhof in Waidbruck, a short 25 minute ride that took us through the small city of Brixen. Brixen was our base camp for two weeks during our fall trip in 2022. At Waidbruck we walked across to the bus platform and hopped on Südtirolmobil bus 170 for a short 15 minute ride up the hill to Castelrotto.

When we arrived in Castelrotto the weather was mostly sunny with some light scattered clouds. A high thin overcast developed during the afternoon but overall it was a nice day for our introduction to this area. We were able to check in to our condo at the Residence Diamant early, just after 11:00 AM, so the timing worked out quite well. We dropped our bags, freshened up, inventoried the kitchen for later shopping, and headed out for the day’s adventure while the weather was still good. From the ‘Autostaziun’ (bus plaza) we caught a bus for the quick 10 minute ride to the neighboring town of Seis.

At Seis we walked a few blocks from the bus stop to the large and quite modern base station for the Seiser Alm Bahn, a cable car that would take us up onto the Alpe di Siusi at Compatsch. Given the time of day this station wasn’t very busy, but later in the afternoon or first thing in the morning we found that it could become quite congested as skiers passed through on their way up to or down from the plateau.

The upper station for the cable car has a very helpful status board for all of the attractions (mostly hotels and hüttes) scattered around the 34 square miles of the Alpe di Siusi. The status board lets you know if the attraction is open, which trail to follow by both number and blaze symbol, and how far the walk will be. We determined that our intended lunch destination, the Sanon Hütte, was indeed open and was about an hour away via trail 30 so we headed out for a well-earned lunch.

We first visited the Sanon Hütte (https://www.sanon.it/) in early October as part of our extended fall trip to the Südtirol. The contrast between that first lunch and this return was significant. For the fall visit we had warm temperatures, glorious blue skies, and a decent but not uncomfortable crowd on the sun terrace. For this return the weather was cold and rapidly becoming overcast. There was also a big ski crowd that resulted in slower service and a less impressive meal overall. It’s hard to complain (nobody will listen anyway) but sometimes when you’re traveling you just can’t go back to repeat the stellar quality of an earlier experience.

Following lunch we hiked back to Compatsch and caught a much more crowded ‘end of the ski day’ cable car back down to Seis. From the bus plaza in Castelrotto we took a short walk to the grocery store so that we could buy provisions to get us started for our week in the area. We always carry some carefully folded fabric shoppimg bags in our backpacks to make these impromptu shopping trips a bit easier – as you might expect most European grocery stores do not provide shopping bags!

We finished the day with a light hors d’oeuvres dinner in the condo and a great sunset.

For Innichen’s main page click here.

For Castelrotto’s main page click here.

For the entire trip’s main page click here.