Bolzano as home base or Castelrotto?

Both are great per my experiences, but if hiking is your focus, stay in Castlerotto/Kastelruth.

I have no experience with Bolzano in the summer, but our esteemed Roberto da Firenze recently described it as on oven in the summer time, and few places have a/c.

I would recommend Ortisei over Castelrotto for hiking. I don't know why Rick loves Castelrotto so much. You have a lot more options in Ortisei, including easy access to the Alpe di Siusi (Seiser Alm). Further up in the mountains, cooler.

I would choose Ortisei over Castlerotto. Beautiful hiking reached via gondolas and funiculars.

Yes, Bolzano is not at altitude and can be distinctly hot in the summer. What I experienced would not be deemed "pleasant". And many lodgings are not air conditioned. It is a very pretty place and most definitely worth a visit (plus, there's the Iceman--highly recommended), but I would not stay there again during the warmer months unless I was making last-minute reservations with the benefit of an accurate weather forecast. In any case, you definitely want to stay up in the mountains if you intend to really experience the Dolomites.

Should you nevertheless decide to stay in Bolzano, I can recommend the Hotel Parc Laurin, which is air conditioned and a cut above my usual. (But I was desperate, having spent four nights in a non-air-conditioned room in Bressanone.) The hotel isn't terribly far from the train station or the departure point for the buses headed up into the mountains.

Thanks for the replies so far everyone.

I should add that we are an older retired couple and enjoy hikes of 5 to maybe 8 miles. My wife is very cold sensitive due to a minor health condition. The weather info here indicated Castlerotto is pretty cool in early September: enter link description here Not looking for night life but just a nice Dolomites hiking and walk about experience.

Looking at Ortesi on the same weather site, it looks very cool in early September (maybe 60F average). Rome2Rio has it down as a 68min bus ride from Bolzano.

Perhaps this is one region where renting a car would be best? Maybe for a day or two? I would need to get an automatic as I don't drive sticks.

I'm not anxious to drive in Italy but when I think of how we do the Sierras here in California it is almost mandatory here.

Go to Ortisei. Early September will be warm, with cool evenings. I recommend a car for visiting the Dolomites, although Ortisei is a hub of the Gardena Valley and has plenty of bus service. Castelrotto is much smaller, so I presume bus service would be minimal, but I’ve always been at the Dolomites with a car, so I’m not sure.
Bolzano sits at the bottom of a Valley and is one of the hottest provincial capitals in Italy always fighting for the record highest temperature of the day with Florence, another hell hole. Early September is still too hot for my taste.

If one looks at the weather info on the link I posted, it says that the average high in Bolzano is about 76F in early Sept. That is warmish but not that bad for us. Reading the RS Italy book more carefully, the #170 bus gets one to the village of Seiser Alm Bahn in 47min where the cable car takes one up to Alpe di Siusi. This link shows that bus route: Bolzano bus to cable car Might work for us.

Castlerotto also looks OK weather wise and hiking is the focus here as Bruce mentioned.

My recollection of the bus park is one of many buses and it was easy to take a bus from Castlerotto/Kastelruth to trailheads. While not a foodie, I distinctly recall enjoying the best ever mushroom risotto at a restaurant nestled within Castlerotto/Kastelruth. Oh, we hiked very late in the season with some snow about. Still superior hiking and amazing scenery. Enjoy.

Temperature averages can be pretty dangerous things, especially when you're talking about spring and fall. There can be quite a difference between the beginning and end of the month, with the average not being a terribly accurate reflection of either one. Plus, averages disguise extremes. And there's also the question of the time period on which the averages are based. A lot of those shown on Wikipedia cut off in 2010, and the weather seems to have gotten more extreme since then.

I urge you to look at actual day-by-day temperatures for recent years before making a decision. Here is the timeanddate.com data for Bolzano in September 2018. Go back several more years to get a better feel for what you might experience. The September 2018 data shows high temperatures above 80F on 11 of the first 15 days of the month and every day between September 16 and 23, inclusive.

Right the range of highs can be quite large. The chart here shows a Bolzano range of 68F to 85F in early September weaterspark charts. Looking at our home town in California it is 75F to 95F so we are used to some warm weather but not rain in the late summers :) . The humidity chart shows higher humidities then the warm dry days in California. So maybe humidity is the difference.

Another difference is the limited availability of air-conditioned interiors in Europe. In the US, we tend to move from an air-conditioned home to an air-conditioned car to an air-conditioned workplace/store/restaurant/museum. In Europe, a lot of those places are not air-conditioned, so it's not always convenient to pop into a cooled environment for a half hour or so. I have tromped through many a museum with perspiration trickling down my back, and if you see a store or restaurant with its door propped open, that's because it isn't air conditioned. It is usually quite a bit cooler at a restaurant's outdoor tables under umbrellas than it is inside. But of course the outdoor area is often full of smokers.

It is really helpful to choose air conditioned lodgings that are a quick walk from the major tourist area. That way, you can pop back to your room to cool off during the hottest part of the day.

I took the RS Alpine tour 3 years ago in early June. The first couple of years, the tour stayed in Bolzano, but by that year, they had switched to Castelrotto because of the easier/quicker access to the Alpi di Suisi. Castelrotto was a pleasant town with several good options for dining al fresco with mountain views.

Interesting point Chani. Looking at the current RS tour it looks like they sleep in the Alpe di Siusi area for 2 nights.

We are coming to the conclusion that 3 nights in Castlerotto (kastelruth) would be a good idea.

Although I’ve never been in Bolzano in early September, I’ve been there in other times of the year including summer (July) and it was hell hot. Also consider that few places are air conditioned up there, because evenings are cool and people simply open the windows before going to bed.
But the point is that if you really want to experience the mountains you should stay in the mountains.
If you stay in Bolzano it would be the equivalent of experiencing Mt. Shasta while staying in Redding or experiencing the mountains at Lake Tahoe while staying in Reno or Sacramento. It’s not the same thing.

Les,

Of the two places you mentioned, Castelrotto would be a much better choice (IMO). It's a very scenic smaller town and if you want to hike, there will be lots of opportunities.

One hike you could look at is from Marinzen (take the chairlift from Castelrotto) to Alpi di Siusi - http://www.marinzen.com/en/ . Hike from there to Alpi di Siusi and then take the bus back. This will provide some idea of the hiking times -https://eagle07.smugmug.com/Travel/Italia-2012/i-F5QQ5FW/A .

I stayed at Hotel Cavallino d' Oro in Castelrotto and would certainly recommend it - http://www.cavallino.it/en/.

Ken, thanks for that information. The hotel looks excellent and I've sent off an email to check on availability.

If I understand your hiking suggestion, it looks like one takes a lift up and does a hike and takes another chair lift down with a short bus ride back to Castlerotto. Looks like the hiking can be fairly light which is good as we won't be packing hiking boots (not enough suitcase room unfortunately).

Were all those great pictures yours? The ones of Cinque Terre makes me start to rethink avoiding that area. I'm not a fan of crowds but it looks so nice on those beaches.

Les,

Your interpretation of the hike is correct. The lift from Castelrotto to Marinzen is an open chair lift, similar to those used at many small ski hills. The lift down from Alpi di Siusi is a small enclosed cars, large enough for four people as I recall. It's an easy bus ride back. The hotel staff can fill you in on the details when you arrive there.

I normally get by with light, all purpose footwear for both street use and light hiking - https://us.ecco.com/ecco-track-ii-low-001944.html?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIpdGqtPz43gIVcRh9Ch0xVQYQEAAYASAAEgK_w_D_BwE

Those were my photos and the beach shown is in Monterosso, the most northerly of the five towns. It's beautiful there but can be crowded at times, especially when cruise ships are in the area. It's possible to minimize crowd problems to some extent by travelling earlier or later in the season, being out of the towns on day trips from about 10:00 - 16:00 or enjoying some quiet time in your hotel in the busy part of the day.

Ken, thanks again for the details. Those Ecco shoes look a lot like my Shetland Merrills which I got at REI. Mine are very light and breathe well for summer rainy weather. I've used them in Italy a few years back.

Ken, that trail #12 is far from easy! Did you hike it? It took us over 2 hours to hike to a point below Compatsch where we gratefully took the #10 bus down to Siusi. The trail was a nightmare with difficult stone stairs and, worst of all, a boulder field blocking the path for about 30 feet that we had to scramble over, followed by a narrow “deer path” along a cliff! That hike was the genesis for a book we wrote about easy hikes in the Val Gardena as locals to the area sometimes direct we flatlanders to “easy” hikes that are not...

I don't think I've been on the path in question, but I had a scary experience in 2015 when I checked with the local tourist office about my plans, pointing out my footwear (good-quality walking shoes rather than hiking gear), got their OK, then made a stupid spur-of-the-moment decision to diverge from the original plan and take a path down to the bottom of the hill rather than returning via the lift. I subsequently made the even-more-stupid decision not to turn around when I started having difficulty (despite having one hiking pole with me). I ended up falling multiple times on loose rock (wet leaves were also a factor) and spraining both ankles, one of them so badly that I wasn't sure I'd get off the hill. I didn't encounter anyone else walking downhill, just a few folks walking up. Obviously, everyone else had more sense than I did.