Day 4: Earth pyramids in the snow

The weather forecast for today had been really positive, consistently stating that it was going to be sunny. I was quite surprised then when Tim opened the curtains this morning and found that it was snowing outside  

When we stepped out of the apartment after breakfast, we were the first to walk in the fresh snow  

The plan for the morning had been to go and see some different earth pyramids near Oberbozen. The path towards them started just outside our hotel.

When we attempted to follow the route though, we found that the path was quite steep and slippery, with rocks just about covered in snow.

We made it part of the way and I was hoping that the path was going to flatten off after a while, but it continued to go quite steeply down, so in the end we gave up and climbed back towards the road.

The road itself was beautiful; we were the first people to walk in the fresh snow here too  

We decided to walk up to the station and catch the train to go and revisit the earth pyramids we'd seen at Klobenstein on Friday instead.

It seemed like a good idea to stay high up, because if it had been snowing up here then it had probably been raining down in Bolzano.

The walk to the station was very scenic in the snow  

We walked past the cable car to the train station. It was a lot busier than it had been on Friday; there seemed to be a tour group of Italians. We managed to squeeze on and get a seat though.

The whole landscape which we travelled through was covered in snow and when we got off the train in Klobenstein, this was the view that awaited us.

Wow. We hadn't been able to see these mountains at all when we were here on Friday!

We walked on snowy pavements towards the pyramids.

A pond which we'd passed on Friday was now almost completely frozen.

The ducks looked rather cold!

I was excited to get to a roadside viewpoint where the entire view had been covered in clouds the other day.

There was still a bit of cloud today, but we could see a lot more  

We could see the church in the distance more clearly too, and now it was completely surrounded by snow  

We'd had no idea that all these mountains were here when we'd walked along the path the other day  

It didn't take long to get to the viewing platform for the earth pyramids.

They looked really cool with snow on top of the stones that sit on top of them  

The views of the mountains from the viewing platform were amazing too.

We were lucky that the cloud was just in the right position not to obscure the mountain tops.

We even caught sight of some mountain goats in a field below us. They must have been rather cold!

Then it was time for us to head back towards Klobenstein.

It was nearly lunch time by this point, so we walked back towards the village to see whether there was anywhere we could get food.

There didn't seem to be a lot of options, so we caught the train back to Oberbozen and the cable car down to Bolzano, where we ended up going to the same restaurant (and having the same meals!) as we did the other day. The food genuinely was really good!

Bolzano itself seemed really busy, with lots of people out shopping.

It all looked very festive though and there were some lovely Christmas decorations.

We decided to go back up to the hotel for a while, then head down to Bolzano in the evening to see the Christmas lights switched on   

There was still a fair bit of snow in Oberbozen once we got back up on the cable car. The roads had been gritted though, so it was easier to walk back to the hotel.

Once back in the hotel, we were able to watch a beautiful sunset from our window