I will have to split up this post into two, as I took SO MANY photos and don't want to overwhelm you.

And I don't want to be dramatic, but these next two parts were from one of the best days in my whole life.

I left the campsite at 8am, in the direction of a place called Misurina. It was not a particularly nice morning, dark, grey and cold with a bit of rain about, but I was going to visit the Lake Misurina. I parked nearby and got out to have a look around. This lake is surrounded by mountains, making it very picturesque. There are quite a few hotels around the lake, which are also very pretty.

The next stop was the Tre Cime. I made a little bit of an error and set my GPS for Tre Cime, and the road I was following went through an outrageously expensive toll... It might have been ok if I was in a car with 4 other people as you paid per car, but as it was just me, it was so much money for one! By the time I'd arrived at the tollgate, however, there were cars behind me so there was no backing out. So take my story as a cautionary tale and park just after Misurina in the carparks and catch the bus up. As of July, 2018, it was €30. Hopefully, however, this fee goes towards the maintenance of the park and the trails, in which case I feel a lot better about paying it.

The drive up was... scary. Not so much for the road itself but because of the aforementioned buses using it too. There were so many hairpin bends, and you had to look to the side to see further up the road to make sure there wasn't a bus coming down, as it just wasn't wide enough.

I parked my camper in what was a fairly full carpark and set out for the trail. The plan was to do the circular walk around the Tre Cime di Lavaredo.

I'd read a few articles online about doing the walk - there was a lot that warned against going in the high season because of bad tourist behaviour, but I've got to say that most people were very polite and well-behaved, even though I was there in high season. There was one wally who insisted on flying his drone in an area that had too many people, but on the whole, people were saying hello, staying to the trails and just absorbing the beauty of the mountains.

The path started off from Rifugio Auronzo. These rifugio serve food and have accommodation for walkers and there are quite a lot of them throughout the national park, which is really handy.

I wrote above that the day started off grey, miserable and cold... well, thankfully, the weather started to improve on my walk and there was a bit of blue sky poking through. It was getting warmer too. But anyway, enough words, here's some pictures...

The path skirted around the base of mountains until it got to Rifugio Lavaredo. I had walked less than 2km but it had taken me ages to do so, what with all the photo-taking! But by this point I was starting to get hot and the next part was a walk uphill so I took my fleece off and kept going.

I made it to the top and looked over to my left and there they were... the Tre Cime di Lavaredo or Three Peaks of Lavaredo, also known in German as Drei Zinnen (they were once the border between Italy and Austria). Over to the right was another rifugio (you definitely wouldn't die of starvation in this section) and paths that went all over the mountains.

I was starting to get a bit peckish as I walked towards the rifugio, so I figured I would duck in and get something to eat. It wasn't quite lunchtime, but I didn't know how far the next one would be, so I thought I would eat something now. Plus, with a view like this, how could I not?!

So that's it for this part. In the next part, I head down into the valley, which is so pretty and was full of cows (with bells on!).