I went to Austria, Slovakia, and the Italian Dolomites with my family as part of our annual summer vacation, squeezed between my sister's SAT test and Labor Day Weekend. My mom was seeking a place similar to Switzerland in terms of natural beauty making the Dolomites an obvious choice and I had heard good things about the Austrian lakes and alpine villages. Given we were only an hour's train ride from Bratislava, we decided to include that to see a Slavic nation as well. Due to its proximity to Ortisei as an international airport, we actually flew out of Munich but our time there was so short and uneventful that I am not including it in the below itinerary. Overall, this trip was a pretty good balance of nature, activities, and culture and I will definitely be returning to the Dolomites to properly hut to hut hike them one day, especially when I am not in the middle of marathon training and spending hours of the vacation running.

Day 0: Take a red eye from JFK to VIE on Austrian Airlines

• We were actually delayed 3.5 hours but Austrian Airlines let us know 12 hours in advance which worked out well

Day 1: Vienna Casual Sightseeing

• After landing, take the bus from the airport straight to the Marriott and check in/unpack things

• Use the subway to get to the city center, Stephenplatz, and walk around the center. The Weinmobil App is very easy to use for the transportation and offers 24 hour unlimited ride tickets which make the most sense to buy for each person. In this walk, we hit:

  • St. Stephen's Cathedral and went inside

    • In order to climb the South Tower, you need to start before 7pm so we tabled this for the next day

  • Graben (fancy shopping streets)

  • Outside of multiple museums and the National Library

• Eat dinner at Levante and head back early for a chill night to recover from the jetlag

Day 2: Vienna Actual Sightseeing

• Since I was in the middle of marathon training during this trip, I began my morning with a 7 mile run around the parks of Vienna near the hotel before coming back for breakfast with everyone else

• Head to Schonbrunn Palace for a tour that needs to be reserved in advance and tickets can be bought online. It is self-guided and covers:

  • Inside of the palace with the rooms that the king and queen used to live in

  • Outside of the palace with the many gardens and grounds. There are some nice floral arrangements, fountains, walkways, and maze structures that are worth walking through here.

• Take the train to the Naschmarket which is a really long food market in the streets of Vienna offering many types of food, fruit stands, and more

• Head to the National Library of Austria which is a very large, beautiful hall with thousands of books and the mosaics are also pretty

• Return to St. Stephen's Cathedral so that my sister and I could climb the South Tower and see the beautiful views from the top of the entire city while our parents continued to walk around and roam the streets

• Eat dinner at Indish and then walk the 2 miles home to the hotel through the streets in the old town, past the river, and through the park I ran through in the morning

Day 3: Bratislava Day Trip

• Take a Rail Europe train to Bratislava in the morning after eating breakfast at the hotel

• From the central train station, there are buses with the ids bk app that offer 24 hour unlimited tickets that you can use to get around the city. Take one up to Bratislava Castle

  • The day we visited, it was the first day of the Parliament's post-summer session so entry was free but the line was also an hour long and not really worth the wait considering what you see inside

• Take the bus down back into the city center to the park area and walk around, stopping at a coffee shop for a snack and seeing the various sites:

  • Michael's Gate -- a nice structure in the center of the old town

  • Main Square -- classic European town center with pretty buildings and lines of shops

• After seeing the main part of town, hop on one of the trams and take it all around the city to get a glance at the rural and urban areas while killing time before the train home at night

• Take the Rail Europe train back to Vienna, grabbing dinner at the station before heading home for the night

Day 4: Train to Salzburg and Salzburg Sightseeing

• Take a Rail Europe train to Salzburg from the Vienna center station after eating breakfast at the hotel

• Leave the bags at the hotel before walking around Salzburg and sightseeing:

  • Mirabell Gardens -- pretty floral gardens in the main part of town

  • Makerstag Bridge -- connects the two sides of the town and is one of those bridges with locks all over it

  • Mozartplatz -- square where Mozart used to live with his museum

  • Residentplatz -- square where lots of cute little shops are and people live

• Keep walking around for a while and then do the same thing as the previous night of getting on a tram and riding it end to end to see the whole town

• Grab dinner at My Indigo before walking around at night and heading back to the hotel

Day 5: Lake Towns and Salt Mines

• I began my morning with a 5 mile run along the waterfront passing through all the town's sights as part of training

• Pick up a rental car from Hertz which is near the train station in the center of town before starting the journey towards Gousassee

  • Lake Gousassee is a gorgeous lake with a 3 mile loop around the water that is very easy to walk and great for all ages

• Drive towards Halstatt for the salt mines

  • The underground salt mines in Halstatt are the world's largest of its kind and involve going pretty far deep underground with 2 slides to help slide to lower levels. If you are claustraphobic or struggle with stairs, this can be a little challenging because of the amount of elevation change involved

    • The mines involved some light shows, water shows, slides, and lots of cool structures and facts all while wearing cool miner outfits

• Eat dinner on the way home at Don Pasquale Pizza before heading to the Gasthoff Seestern, a lakehouse for the night

Day 6: Drive to Ortisei with stop at Alpbach

• Have coffee by the lakehouse in the morning before heading towards Alpbach for a stop during the long drive to Ortisei

• Alpbach is a gorgeous alpine village in Austria with miles of endless green, pastures, cows, small buildings, and is generally very pretty and peaceful

• Drive to Innsbruck after the stop at Alpbach to get another town of Austria in before leaving the country

  • Innsbruck does not have much besides one little street with the Golden Roof so it is easy to get a sense of the place relatively quickly

• Head to Ortisei after grabbing dinner along the way at The Doner to the hotel

Day 7: Alpe di Suisi

• Start the morning with another quick 4 mile run in the hilly mountains

• My sister and I had reserved paragliding from the top of Alpe di Suisi over the town of Ortisei which was an insane experience to be able to see the entire alps, the pastures, the whole town, and everything below us as we floated down

• After paragliding, we took the cable car up with our parents so that they could see the vast expanse of the Alpe di Suisi that the Dolomites are famous for and where people go hut to hut hiking

• After walking around for an hour up there, we took the cable car back down and spent the rest of the afternoon wandering the town of Ortisei and the little village that it is located in with the many streets of shopping

• Grab dinner at Cascade before heading back to the hotel to relax

Day 8: Lago di Braies

• After eating breakfast, take a day trip out to Lago di Braies, one of the prettiest lakes in the Italian Dolomites area

  • You need to reserve parking here ahead of time and then its a short walk to the main lake area. Similar to Gousassee, you can walk the loop over the course of an hour

• Return from the lake and grab dinner at Synabon, packing early to head out to Munich the next morning

Day 9: Drive to Munich

• After eating breakfast, drive to Munich for 5 hours with stops along the way to stretch

• I had to do a long run this day of 16 miles before returning to the states so my family went and explored Munich city center since I had already been while I ran the farmlands of outer Munich near the Airport

• Takeout Love India Kitchen for dinner and then sleep before an early morning flight back to the US