I chose Bozen as my first primary base for this tour because of its proximity to four rides I wanted to do and also because the youth hostel offered cheap accommodations which always appeals to me.

First my opinion on the youth hostel: typical situation here really.

Pluses:

• Sufficient room size and good bathroom
• Convenient location across from main train/bus station, plenty of restaurants nearby, close to Radweg and the Altstadt 
• Cheap
• Pretty clean, at least by hostel standards

Minuses:

• Street noise
• Lots of families means lots of noise during awake hours
• Smokers on balconies means opening windows for a breeze since rooms are not air conditioned can get stinky
• Below average breakfast options with zero fresh fruit 
• Internet gets clogged at night, probably because everyone here is online 
• Very poor mask enforcement. I finally complained today to management after seeing multiple people at the breakfast buffet line without a mask in sight. 

As a base for rides Bozen is good. The ride up on the Ritten is definitely worth it. Just be prepared for some steep descents. The towns there generally have alpine character and services of some sort including restrooms. 

The Seiser Alm is also attractive. Just don’t go there expecting mountain solitude. It is essentially the hiking/mountain biking equivalent of Disneyland. Think traffic jams don’t happen in the mountains?  Hahahahaha. Try visiting the Seiser Alm in good weather.  Plenty of restaurants, generally with theme park type prices. There are some more remote areas and also some decent sized towns crammed with tourists. Overall an unusual experience and not at all the mountain solitude I pictured. 

The ride to the Kalterer See is another great ride with a vastly different character to the Ritten and Seiser Alm. There was still a good amount of bike traffic, especially around the Kalterer See, but it wasn’t as clogged as down in the valley. The ride is almost entirely on bike path with basically all of the path being converted rail line. Though the ride starts with 700’ of climbing out of the valley, the grades are gentle and I never felt like I was having to work hard to get uphill. Kaltern is a very nice little town with character. If you’re into wine, this is the place for you. And then the Kalterer See is quite nice as well. The whole ride runs through vineyards and Apple orchards. 

There are nice biking and walking paths along the rivers and the Talferbach in Bozen. Aside from that I didn’t see much in the way of park areas in the city center and though there are a couple market squares, I didn’t find them to be all that attractive. There are also areas of attractive buildings here too, but they’re oddly more on back streets rather than the main tourist areas.

Overall I found Bozen to be unusual. It’s heavily touristed and clearly oriented towards shopping. It took me several days to find a decent restaurant (Gul, a Pakistani/Indian restaurant). It just didn’t appeal to me. I chose my accommodations each night in larger towns and I may come to regret that. I prefer smaller more remote areas and Bozen, Brixen, Meran, Bruneck, and Toblach definitely are none of those things. Toblach may be okay though. It does appear I’m on the outer edge of it and I’m staying in a small village on the outskirts of Bruneck so that might go alright as well.

It does have some good scenery, being tucked back into the mountains and it is neat to look down the end of the street and see an imposing mountain face with a little hut perched way up top. I don’t think I’d come here again though as a destination.  I really like the more remote places without all the tourists. Also, everyone here speaks Italian and some speak little to no German. So much for German being the primary language in South Tyrol. 

Overall I rate it worth a visit once just to say you’ve seen all the things, but it’s not on my list of places I’d go back to like Salzburg, the Tauern Radweg, and Berchtesgaden.