Day 7 – A Trip North To Vipiteno

Oct 14, 2022

Today’s Adventure

On Friday Cindy and I headed north to explore some new territory with a visit to Sterzing (Vipiteno in Italian), a charming town just south of the Austrian border at the Brenner Pass. The Eisack River flows through this truly ancient town with medieval roots and settlements dating back to 14 BC. You might officially be in Italy, but as with much of the Südtirol roughly three-quarters of the local population claims German as their primary language.

We started our day with a Trenitalia train ride north from Brixen to Freienfeld (Campo di Trens in Italian) – this trip only took about 25 minutes with a quick stop at Fortezza. From there we walked up the hill towards Santuario di Maria Trens, the big church in town, and continued north to the trailhead for Trail 27. This mostly woodland trail gave us some nice views southward down the Val Isarco and northward into the Austrian Alps as it took us around the shoulder of a large mountain (the Gschliessegg).

We eventually passed Sprechenstein Castle and a good viewpoint across the valley to Reifenstein Castle before dropping down to the Pfitscher Bach, a tributary of the Eisack River. A small bridge took us across this stream and put us on a path that followed this river downstream and into Sterzing. Along the way we passed an obviously new bio-fueled energy facility – it seems that many of the local towns in the Südtirol have used their tax dollars to invest in this interesting and responsible technology for their power generation needs.

Cindy had done her homework, as usual, so it was a simple matter to find our way to the highly-rated Pizzeria Kolping to enjoy some wood-fired pizzas while seated in their outdoor courtyard. Cindy ordered the Sonklar (buffalo mozzarella with spinach and salami) while Stuart braved the Inferno (Lombardy pepperoni with housemade pepperoncini). Both were excellent, especially with the addition of our new favorite chili-infused olive oil.

After lunch we wandered through the medieval old town section. As with so many other towns in this region, Sterzing has made their old town sections ‘pedestrian only’ so you don’t have to worry about noise or traffic while you window shop. It was obvious that Sterzing is not as heavily oriented towards tourism as other places we visited on this trip based on the mix of businesses that we saw in the old town section. Even though it was a sunny Friday afternoon there were still quite a few locals walking around and enjoying the open-air cafes. We tracked down two cones of gelato from a small storefront (pistachio for Cindy and lemon for Stuart) and then found our way back to the Bahnhof for the ride back to Brixen.

To return to the main page for Brixen click here.

To return to the main page for the entire trip click here.