Dolomites

Highlights

• Fantastic hikes
• Great food
• Wine and beer

This is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. For a perfectly dense vacation, I plan routes, hike among unbelievable mountains, drop into rifugios that are now basically regular restaurants, then head back in the evening to soak in a spa hotel, somehow not gaining weight despite everything I eat. On top of the scenery there’s this incredible mix of Austrian and Italian culture — schnitzels, pasta, beer, wine, decent Italian bubbly for 5–6 euros in any shop — and here I discovered speck, a Tyrolean cousin of jamón that’s heavily spiced and smoked instead of air-dried (there isn’t enough sun for that), and it’s a million times tastier than any jamón or prosciutto, so of course I brought a kilo home; after that, only the photos can really tell the story.