Italy Trip Questions: Vatican visit, Dolomites area, Venice tour timing

We visit St. Peter’s every time we visit Rome and we have been there five or six times.. Last time we went to a ticket line, bought them and entered. That was in 2020. Everything may have changed since COVID. We only did the Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel on our first trip to Rome.
In Ortisei there are lifts on each side of the valley. Once you get off the gondola or funicular, you are ready to start hiking. Beautiful! We did one lift our first full day and the other our second full day.
I highly recommend Hotel Grones in Ortisei. We walked from the hotel to the lifts. Hotel staff helped us with our hiking plans.
Some of the hotel staff spoke Laden, a dialect. But we heard Italian and German too, some English.

Dolmites. https://www.suedtirol.info/en/regions/dolomites/Dolomites--Val-Gardena

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/italy/dolomites-to-train-or-car

St. Marks and St. Peter’s are VASTLY different, I do think you will regret not visiting St. Peter’s. But don’t feel limited by including it on a combined tour with the Vatican museum. You can visit on your own after your museum tour (closes at 7pm) but you wont be able to take the short cut after the Sistine chapel, so just know there will be a long walk between the two. Or even better you can take the bus to return to visit St Peter’s the next morning at 7am when there will be no lines and people, and tour on your own using the RS audio app. You will be done in 1hr and it won’t interfere with your day plans.

For st Marks, try and time your visit to when the lights are turned on between 11:30am-12:30pm, to see the gold mosaics really sparkle. For time and efficiency you may want to look into just visiting Dodges Palace on your own using the audioguide and RS book guide, then you could also reserve entry into St. Marks for a nominal fee and listen to the RS audio app. That way you are not bound by the time of the guided tours and can move on to other sights. For maximum siteseeing efficiency while in Venice (if you are willing to pay for it), Walks of Italy offers an end of day Dodges Palace and St. marks after dark ($160, 5:30pm-9:30pm) so you can fit in more sightseeing during the day. I did just the st. Mark after dark visit several years ago and it was breathtaking..

Thank you for the insights!

We are only in Rome on arrival day and then the next day for 3/4 is it - that’s a Sunday. That’s why I’m so torn on the Vatican visit since it’s only something we’d do the afternoon we land and I think two hours will be the most we are good for that day. Since it’s a Sat in summer I figured the lines would be nutso to clear security without using the Vatican museum entry route. 🫤

Thanks for the Venice tour suggestion. That may work well. Since we’re not day tripping I was trying to time the St Marks/Doge visit to minimize crowds.

German is the first language of many in Ortisei. Your kids should have no trouble practicing, including reading signs and menus as well as speaking. I find it much easier to understand the German spoken there than Swiss German or the Bavarian dialect.

When we were there last September, we hiked from that lift up from Ortisei to the main trail toward Saltria and looped around to a lift down to Santa Cristina. That was an all-day hike.

On a previous visit, we rented bikes in Ortisei and took them up on the lift and rode the trails instead. That was a lot of fun and I’ll bet you and your kids would enjoy that. Just be careful with the signage as some trails are closed to cyclists ( for good reason—- too gnarly).

Good to hear re: the German and bikes. I’m getting so excited!! :)

Oh for such a short time in Rome I wouldn’t even bother with the Vatican museum then, especially if you are trying to fit it in on arrival day. Your time is better suited to just doing some city walks to see the sights. Save the Vatican for a future trip.

Ortisei is trilingual: 84% of the residents are Ladin speakers, 10% German, 6% Italian. Ladin is a minority language, somewhat related to the Swiss Romantsch; as its Swiss relative, originates in the Latin language of people living in Alpine valleys before middle age German migrations from north. Ladin is used in schools, on road signs, and the Italian state TV has a studio in Ortisei to develop Ladin news programs, every evening on RAI3. As Ladin is of little use for interchange with the external world, almost all people speaking Ladin in their homes will speak German or Italian or both - German is preferred as it is the majority language of the province; the provincial dialect resembles Bavarian more than high German.
Ortisei is Ortisei in Italian, St. Ulrich in German and Urtijëi in Ladin.

I second the advice to not attempt the Vatican with your time frame.

Shawna, you can take the cable car up to the Alpe di Siusi and do a hike right away. We call it the roundtrip at Mont Sëuc and it is about 3.5 miles . Here is a link to a map I made https://www.plotaroute.com/route/1024735.

For a longer trek, you can easily walk to Compatsch and then return to Ortisei via cable car down at Siusi and catch a bus back to Ortisei. The hike is under 4 miles but it makes for a longer day since you have that lengthy return by bus. Of course you could hike to Compatsch, have lu ch, the. Hike back to Mont Sëuc to return to Ortisei.

I think Google "fixed" Lola's post: salt rica should probably read Saltria. Loved our stay in Ortisei in 2019.

Thank you! I appreciate all the further feedback points here!

Thanks Janet! I did not proofread my own post. It is now corrected.