Dolomites Guide

Full Guide & itinerary

Nov 20, 2025

The Dolomites, a UNESCO world heritage mountain range in Northern Italy. With what I can only describe as feeling like I’m living in a real life fairytale. A place where every view and landscape quite literally take your breath away!

The Dolomites has been on my bucket list for a very long time and to finally get to experience it was incredible! It exceeded my expectations in every way possible!

If your looking for stunning landscapes, beautiful hikes and an amazing Italian adventure this is the trip for you!

Continue reading below for my full guide and all my recommendations.

Know before you go:

Really important to check the season you want to go in, as some months are not ideal for hiking due to heavy snowfall!
They use Euros! I would recommend bringing cash as not all places we came across accepted cards. I always like to tip in cash too!
Remember many restaurants/cafes close during the afternoon so plan accordingly
Book car parks in advance especially if you are planning to go during summer which is peak tourist season!
Pack suncream! Even in winter
Due to the roads being steep and narrow in some parts always allow for extra driving time
Don’t try to plan too much into one day especially if the walks you want to do are a fair distance away from each other! I would recommend focusing on one area each day and then moving onto another area the following day. Alternately you could stay in two different locations or more overnight, depending on how long you are there for

Travel Tip - The weather can change drastically very quickly! So make sure to take lots of layers with you and prepare for all weather conditions

How to get there:

There are a few different ways in which you can get to the Dolomites:

Venice airport (Italy) → 2 hour drive

Verona Airport (Italy) → 2 hour drive

Innsbruck (Austria) → 1.5 hour drive

These timings are a rough guide depending on traffic and season.

If you are coming from Innsbruck or another country make sure to check with your car rental company that you can cross the border as some don’t allow it. I would also recommend pre-booking and picking the rental car up from whichever airport you are arriving into, it saves time and hassle!

I would advise the only way to truly experience the Dolomites is by having a rental car or van! Your experience without that wouldn’t be the same at all! Public transport does exist there but it doesn’t run super frequently and often not taking you directly to the locations we wanted to be. During our trip some of the most amazing views came from just driving around, and we had the freedom to pull over and explore on our own time.

My 5 day itinerary:

Day 1:

Get the earliest flight out of London Gatwick (Or your chosen airport). The reason for an early flight is this is a fairly long travel day.

We flew into Venice airport and had pre-booked a rental car via Autovia, its located within the airport which is super convenient and we had no issues at all with this company, would recommend.

Once on the road you have the option of taking two roads to the Dolomites, the toll road or the scenic route. The toll road is much quicker but costs around €9, taking around 2 hours to get there. The scenic route however takes around 3 hours depending on traffic it can take longer but it is a pretty drive but expect a lot of roundabouts!

We were driving to the town of Cortina where we would be staying for 2 nights in a hotel called Nord hotel. Cannot fault this hotel, the rooms were super clean and the staff went above and beyond! They recommended great places to eat and fun things to do and see in the town. Highly recommend as a budget friendly room.

On the way to our accommodation we stopped at Passo Giau which is a mountain pass, its super incredible and most definitely kickstarted our trip off with the most amazing view! I would recommend going here for sunset, its truly beautiful! Its also worth mentioning this is free and you also don’t need to hike to it! Just drive straight up and there’s a little car park at the top.

The first evening we headed for dinner at Dolom’eats all’Aquila which is an authentic experience! Could not fault this restaurant, everything that was served was absolutely delightful and delicious! The service was fantastic they paid attention to the smallest details, our experience was perfect. If you do decide to go there make sure to try their 400g steak! It’s pretty incredible and you wont be disappointed!

Make sure to have an early night as we have a full on day tomorrow exploring!

Day 2:

Wake up nice and early, fuel up and get on the road to Tre Cime di Lavaredo!

For this hike you need to pre-book parking which is around £35 for the day, I would advise booking the car park as far in advance as you can as it gets very booked up especially if you are going in peak tourist season. Once you have booked you will need to add your hire car number plate to the booking, we did this once we had picked our car up on the first day. Do not turn up to the car park unless you have a booking!

There are two hikes you can do here being Cadini Misurina and the Tre Cime di Lavardeo loop which takes around 3-4 hours to complete.

Due to us going in late October we knew the weather was going to be a bit hit and miss! The morning we went was pretty overcast but because we had the parking booked we decided to go anyway.

Once arrived and parked we walked the shorter walk to Cadini Misurina, the famous view point. Video below:

The view even though overcast was still pretty amazing, I can only imagine on a clear day how incredible it would look.

Our original plan was to spend most of our day here and do both walks however the weather had other plans and the visibility was just getting increasingly worse, we decided to get a little lunch at the cafe up there and see if the weather would pass, but sadly not.

We decided to drive back down the mountain and go to Lake Misurina & Lake Landro hoping the weather was less cloudy down there.

Both lakes were beautiful and fairly close to each other too so its two places you can see on the same day. Its also great as both lakes are free so its not an extra expense to pay out for.

We spent around an hour at each one which was plenty of time! I would imagine in the summer it would be lovely to have a picnic around this area and stop for longer if you wanted to.

In the afternoon we had a few hours spare until sunset so we decided to hike to a waterfall called Cascate di Fanes. When I looked online I couldn’t see many posts about this place on social media so I was unsure of what to expect.

I read online that the hike takes around 1 hour 40 minutes however we managed to do it in an hour, It is uphill for most of the way there but it’s on a pathway until the very end where the path gets extremely narrow! For the last 100m of the hike you’ll need to hold onto a rail to gain access around a corner to the main viewing area of the waterfall. But honestly once around the corner it was actually incredible and even the views walking to the main waterfall are so stunning, highly recommend this hike. Also whats worth mentioning is we didn’t see anyone else while on this particular hike, we had it all to ourselves!

Once you reach the waterfall you can in fact stand right under the water! Also if you wanted to carry on hiking past this waterfall there is another pathway you can take once you’ve walked under the water itself. Alternatively you can take the same route back down like we did.

Day 3:

This morning is our last breakfast at hotel Nord as for the last few nights we booked accommodation via airbnb in Bruneco so that we could spend some time in a different area and be closer to the other places we wanted to see. So we packed all of our bags and took them with us. The airbnb we stayed in is linked here. It was such a great location and was super clean, the only downside to it was that you cannot check in until 4pm! It worked for us as we knew we had a full on day out exploring but its worth keeping in mind depending on your itinerary.

We decided to head to Lago di Braies for the morning! You don’t need to pay to see the lake however if you are parking there you will need to pay for parking, We paid on arrival and had no issues.

Looking back now being at the lake for the morning light was such a good decision! The lake was so still and looked absolutely stunning. It was also nice that we got to see the lake before any canoes were out on the water.

There are two cafes on the lake, one as you enter and one right next to the water with an amazing view! We grabbed coffee right next to the lake and sat admiring the view before doing the hour walk around the lake. Highly recommend walking around as its nice to see the lake from all different angles as you get to see it in all its glory.

If you do decide to hire a canoe it costs €55 for a private boat and that is a maximum of 5 people lasting 45 minutes.

After the walk we grabbed an aperol spritz and some lunch by the lake before heading on to out next location of the day.

Next up we decided to drive to Seceda! This is probably one of the most famous view points in the Dolomites. We parked in the underground garage that is right next to the cable car itself which is in the town of Ortisei. We just turned up and managed to get a parking space, again you do have to pay for the parking.

We paid for our ticket for the cable car upon arrival and it cost €52 per person for a return ticket - so not the cheapest trip! I can only imagine in peak season how busy this would be!

Upon going up in the cable car you do actually have to get two cable cars! Once you get around half way you then change and wow! You literally scale up the mountain!! If your afraid of heights I would look into this as you really are so high up!

Once we reached the top the weather really took a turn for the worst and all visibility was gone! We were actually unable to complete the itinerary we had planned here so we decided to head to the cafe and get a spritz instead! We hoped if we waited it out the weather might clear but sadly not! We made the most of what we could given the circumstances.

Dinner that evening was at Tantalus back in Bruneco which was recommended for it’s pizzas! We had a lovely meal and a very calm evening. The highlight of this meal was the most amazing tiramisu for dessert, if you go you must try it!

Day 4:

We decided to have a slower morning so we headed to get breakfast at Mondschein Dessertbar which is located in Bruneco where we planned our day ahead! This particular morning we did have a fair amount of rain so we decided to head in the direction of St. John Church and hoped the weather would improve! From Bruneco it is about an hours drive away.

The church is situated on private land so you cannot walk across freely, there is however a small viewing platform where you can look across for free. If you wanted to get up closer to the church you can pay a small fee of €4pp to walk along a small pathway to get a closer look, however you cannot go inside the church.

On a clearer day you would get a full view of the mountains behind, sadly we were not so lucky but you can still see how impressive the valley is.

Our original plan after visiting the Church was to head to Alpe dui Siusi but because of our bad luck with the weather we decided to drive back to Bruneco and do a little forest walk near our accommodation, which turned out to be really beautiful!

For our last dinner of the trip we headed to a restaurant called Rischon which serves a mix of Italian & Austrian food. I had the cheese fondue and parsley ravioli and wow its was so good! I’m honestly still dreaming about it now. This was by far my favourite place I ate during my whole time in the Dolomites!

Day 5:

Home time!

I would suggest getting a later flight home in the evening like we did as that way you can fit one last breakfast or nice hike in! Spend the morning doing anything that you didn’t get to see or would like to go back and do!

We tried to re-visit the Tre Cime loop as we didn’t get the best view on our first day but unfortunately on our last morning we got snow! Which was amazing! However the car park was closed due to too much snow that we still couldn’t do it.

However we made the most of the last day by driving back to Passo Giau to see it in the snow which was incredible! We also stopped for coffee along the way and did an hours hike to Cinque Torri. There are a few different hikes you can do from here but we were limited due to the snowfall.

Give yourself enough time to get back to the airport and drop your rental car off.