Hi folks,
My girlfriend and I are planning a trip to Italy together at the tail end of August/start of September and I'd love some feedback on our plan since it's the first time I've planned a trip of this size.
We'll fly into Milan and pick up a car before driving to Riva Del Garda, where we'll stay for 5 nights, shooting to do activities on the lake and nearby hiking, mostly taking it easy. Then we were going to drive up to Cortina and stay there for 8 nights, focusing on hiking and other attractions in the area, planning on staying at Rifugio Son Forca one night. Lastly, we'll stay a night in Venice before catching the train the next morning back to Milan.
We're still ironing out the exact itinerary for each location, but for each we're trying to focus on stunning (challenging) hikes, culture, history, and food, in that order. I've noticed that this forum is not too hot on car rentals. It seems like a rental, at least for our time in the Dolomites, may be necessary to get to and from trailheads or other attractions? I could be talked out of renting a car on Lake Garda but I don't mind footing the bill unless it's truly useless.
Last summer, my family and i spent time in Lauterbrunnen Switzerland and I really loved it there. I would love to create similar memories for my girlfriend and seeing this forum talk about Ortisei it seems like that may fit the bill, so I was thinking about pivoting and spending all or most of our time in the dolomites in Ortisei rather than Cortina. My chief concern would be that Ortisei wouldn't have the challenging hikes we'd want to get after or that after 5 days there we'd begin to run out of activities.
Thank you everyone for reading and your feedback - I've never been to Italy before so any feedback is welcome!