In mid-May 2019 we want to travel from Lake Como to a spa outside of Meran (from where we will also visit the Dolomiti). Our trip will be a combination of trains and rental cars. I found the train trip (going south and then across and then north to Bolzano) to be over 6 hours and by car around 4. Then I saw what I thought was the best news ever in the 2018 Rick Steves Italy (p 230):
"Between the Dolomites and Lake Como, the scenic high road (SS 38 via Meran and Bormio) is only a half-hour slower than the expressway through Verona." And then he goes on to recommend the town of Glurns. This sounded PERFECT to me, as we were already planning to hit Verona the after Dolomiti and I like to see different things when possible.
Once I started researching this though, I found that the route goes over the Stelvio Pass, which is a pretty big deal, and I'm puzzled why that isn't mentioned (along with the various factors of the Stelvio Pass). My husband is fine with driving it (he'd prefer to take his bike, ... another time .....), but I'm wondering how to plan around the chance that it won't be open yet. I have read in several places that it doesn't open until June. A friend in Switzerland says "of course it will be open," but I checked the dates for this year and it was open in April, then closed a bunch in May, and reopened near the end of May. If I book everything with plans that it will be open, and then it's not, what are our options?
And if we decide to take a train, do we have options other than going south to make connections, go east, and then connect again to go north? Lake Como and Meran join in a fairly straight line -- I'd rather wiggle across mountains than do the big U-shaped route across the autostada or main train lines.