A road trip from Munich to the Dolomites

In the summer of 2024, we wanted to take Victor on another European road trip.

The plan was fairly simple: travel from Paris to Munich by train, rent a car there, and spend two weeks making a loop through Germany, Austria and Italy.

The journey started with a little more drama than expected.

We left Paris on the day of the Olympic Games opening ceremony, and only minutes after our departure, several deliberate fires disrupted large parts of the French high-speed rail network.

We missed our connections and eventually arrived in Munich almost six hours late.

After a very quick visit to the city, we headed into Bavaria.

Neuschwanstein, Füssen, alpine lakes and then the Zugspitze, where a cable car took us to almost 3,000 metres.

Victor loved being above the clouds and even managed to find some snow to play in during the middle of summer.

We then crossed into the Austrian Tyrol, stopped in Innsbruck and finally reached the part of the journey we had been looking forward to most: the Dolomites.

Visiting the Dolomites in a week

Over the following days, the landscape seemed to change with every hike.

The huge pastures of Alpe di Siusi, the dramatic ridge at Seceda, the Tre Cime seen from a helicopter, tiny churches surrounded by mountains…

Traces of the First World War

But the route shown on this map takes us to a very particular area: Passo Falzarego and Lagazuoi.

We had already explored the Cinque Torri area, but this time the weather was much better.

From Passo Falzarego, a cable car takes you straight up to the Lagazuoi refuge.

Within a few minutes, the green alpine scenery disappears and you’re surrounded by an almost lunar landscape of bare rock.

Sandrine and Victor settled in at the refuge while I walked to the viewpoint on the Lagazuoi Piccolo.

Then the three of us set off together along the trail.

The views are spectacular, but what makes this area so unusual is not just the scenery.

During the First World War, this mountain range was directly on the front line between Italian and Austro-Hungarian troops.

The mountains still carry the traces of that conflict.

Many hikers wear helmets because some of the routes pass through tunnels carved directly into the rock by soldiers.

Some are relatively easy to access, while others require proper equipment.

Old positions, military structures and parts of the soldiers’ living quarters can still be seen in the mountain.

There is also a museum dedicated to the Great War at the foot of the pass.

It’s a strange experience: walking through one of the most beautiful mountain landscapes in Europe while constantly being reminded that, just over a century ago, it was a battlefield.

With Victor, though, we didn’t push the hike too far.

The ground is extremely rocky, there is plenty of elevation change and sometimes very little that resembles a normal path.

Before long, Victor was asking to be carried.

After our picnic, we decided to turn around rather than turn a family hike at 2,700 metres into several hours of carrying a four-year-old.

And that became one of the recurring themes of our Dolomites trip: adapting what we wanted to do to travelling with a young child.

We chose Alpe di Siusi because large sections are relatively flat.

At Seceda, the cable cars gave us direct access to the high ridges.

And at Falzarego, we were happy to explore only a small part of the mountain.

On the way back, we crossed Passo Pordoi.

The weather suddenly changed, a thunderstorm arrived and extremely heavy rain caused traffic jams on the mountain roads.

Victor fell asleep in the car, and we abandoned the final walk we had planned.

That day summed up the Dolomites rather well.

In just a few hours, you can move from blue skies to a thunderstorm, from easy alpine meadows to almost high-mountain terrain, and from postcard scenery to the dark tunnels of a war fought inside the mountains themselves.