Post cruise visit to Bozano or Verona or ? for 4-5 nights

Verona and Bolzano are two very different experiences. Verona is a lovely 4 day destination but it is not in the mountains and that Tyrollean atmosphere you are looking for is a little further north. It has great food, Roman ruins, a castle, museums, piazzas, churches, nightlife and is a great destination. Bolzano does give you that Tyrollean atmosphere and foods but may I suggest you consider Trento as a more central mountain base instead of Bolzano? Trento is on the main train line from Verona to Austria. It has both Italian and Tyrollean architecture, restaurants and cultural influence. From there you might want to take daytrips to Bolzano, Bressanone, Vipeteno or Merano, all in the mountains. All reachable by train. Take a look at all these towns and see which fit best with what you are wanting to see and do. Or from Trento a visit to the northern tip of Lago di Garda with its pretty towns of Riva del Garda, Limone sul Garda and Malcesine is doable. To go here you would need to hire a driver for the day. All of these three towns are on the lake, surrounded by mountains and beautiful scenery. I did this last year. We were four people and we hired a car service to drive us from Trento to explore these lake towns for the day. We also did a daytrip by train to Bolzano. There we visited the Bolzano Iceman museum and also took a bus out to a nearby castle. We came to Trento from a few days in Verona, but you could easily do a daytrip from Trento to Verona ( about one hour by train). There is much to see and do in Verona. Your two main international airports for flights to the US will be Milano or Venice. The other option you have is two days in Verona and two days in the mountains.

Hello!

My husband and I spent a week in Bolzano in mid-October 2018, and then a couple of nights in Verona. Bolzano was one of our favorite places ever, to the point that we felt we could live there, not that we have that choice.

What made Bolzano so great for us was not strictly the town itself, which is interesting enough, but it offers so many things very close by that we thoroughly enjoyed. While it is South Tyrol, it doesn't feel Tyrolean to me in the way Innsbruck does. The language in the city is Italian, the food is more German. We didn't find the food the best of both worlds, perhaps because we were usually dragging ourselves back to the city after a full day, and just took what we could find open. (Restaurants start closing up at 8 p.m.) Our go-to was take-out from an Italian gourmet deli near our AirBnb.

It is a shame you are not hikers, as the nearby Seiser Alm is a wonderful day trip. Still, you might consider taking the stunning bus ride to Ortisei, a charming town full of wood carvings (visit the church.) You can then take the cable car up to the Seiser Alm, and even without hiking you can stroll around and enjoy wonderful views. German is spoken in the small towns.

The Ötzi museum is fascinating, don't miss it. We also enjoyed Runkelstein Castle with its murals, and walked back into town through the vineyards. Bolzano is a great place if you enjoy wine. We did a bike trip on the Weinstrasse one day, and it was beautiful, although I didn't enjoy sharing a road with cars on the way back. But there are many good wineries in the area to try in easier ways.

My favorite weekend ever was a Saturday evening at the Traminer Wein gassl, wine tasting of Gewürztraminer in a little alley in Tramin (Termeno), complete with food, music and dancing. We followed that with the Merano grape festival parade on Sunday afternoon, as gorgeous a day as you could hope for. Sip wines while enjoying costumes, marching bands and lavish floats. It was fairly (and understandably) crowded, but we didn't run into any other Americans. The parade was followed by a concert in the Kurhaus by the Bolzano community band and then a passagieto around the beautiful town. I think these events will be the weekend before you could be there, but this area offers cultural festivals and events almost every weekend, check event calendars for south Tyrol.

Verona is completely Italian with some hills but no mountains, a completely different experience. Pretty touristy, but we had a couple of outstanding dinners, and not expensive. It's longer by train from Bolzano than I expected.

Just a note, we went to Venice the last week of October. After a month of perfect weather, we were struck with record high waters in Venice, and at the same time there was flooding in northern Italy. We took a direct EC train from Venice to Munich, except in this case we were unloaded onto a bus for a stretch because some of tracks were washed out. But that's another story...

Have a wonderful trip!