Naz-Schiaves, Italy

Wednesday 15 June

After a bit of a restless night due to the fact that we were unable to get rid of all the flies in the room, we checked out, hopped in the car and set our GPS for Italy via Innsbruck. We made a quick stop along the way at an archaeological museum called Aguntum.  It was opened in June 2005 and shows the remains of an ancient Roman town which was discovered when the road was being upgraded.

It was a fairly easy drive to Innsbruck and we found a car park without too much trouble and had a walk around the old part of town.  It is very pretty with the mountains in the background and a large pedestrian precinct with its only downside being that there was quite a bit of roadwork going on. We grabbed a quick bite to eat and then carried on.

The route from Innsbruck to Naz-Schiaves took us over the Brenner Pass which is the lowest altitude pass over the Alps and therefore the most popular. I found it hair raising being a passenger as I'd forgotten how crazy Italian car drivers were and the interstate truckies were not much better. They came so close at times, I just shut my eyes and thought if they are going to hit us, I don't want to see it coming!

The Brenner highway is jointly owned by Austria and Italy and is a toll road so you get to pay to be scared out of your wits. Anyway, eventually we arrived at the exit we needed and happily exited towards Pension Klara at Naz-Schiaves. We found the house without too much trouble and after a quick phone call to Klara to let her know we were standing at the front door, she arrived on a bicycle and showed us to our room. It was a lovely, big bright room with an ensuite and a balcony. Klara didn't speak much English and we don't speak much German or Italian but we managed to communicate with a mixture of all 3 languages and much sign language. She showed us where to go for breakfast in the morning and recommended a place to eat for dinner. The house has no internet connection and the only place that has it, is the information centre in the middle of the village.

View from the balcony

Naz-Schiaves is in the South Tyrol and as such has more German speakers than Italian. The houses are picturebook beautiful with most of them being 2 or 3 storeys and they all have window boxes with red geraniums growing profusely. The valley where Naz-Schiaves is, is an apple growing area so the fields around the village are filled with apple trees which are grown on trellis. It is very pretty as everything is so green and lush.
The town is very small, so we went for a walk to explore - I enjoyed exploring the supermarket :-) and seeing the different types of local apples available although they are all last season's now as the new ones are not ripe yet. We found the information centre too but it was closed so we decided to return in the morning to check our mail etc then on to the pizzeria for dinner and home to bed as we were both really tired.