We liked a pensione in the village of Colfosco so much that we decided to go back there for our last night in the Dolomites.  The place provided a very nice large room with an excellent breakfast for 36 euros, plus a fine 4 course dinner for only 13 euors.  That is about $55 a niight including dinner and breakfast.  As Clay commented, we should just move in there permanently.  

For our last hike, we had planned to try to squeeze another 2 day hike into 1, but decided that we do something less aggressive after making that mistake 2 days in row (over 9000 of vertical and nearly 30 miles seemed enough).  So we did a local hike that only ended being about 12 miles, though with perhaps 2500 ft of vertical.  Seemed like a walk in the park... (not actually).

The hike took us out of the village of Selva di Gardena and had a little bit of everthing on a picture perfect day.  The usual spiky Dolomites-

An impressive isolated moutain (Mt Sassolongo)-

A great traverse-

The usual cliff and exposure-

A peak with marevelous 360s-

And a view of the most beautiful valley in the Dolomites (the Vallangua or something like that)-

One of the problems, though, with all of the hiking is that we lost some weight (beer and pizza and powerbars could not keep up with the calorie burning).  The consequence was that I ran out of loops in my belt.  What with the camera in my pocket and the pack on my hip and the nylon hiking skivvies, I had a hard to time keeping my shorts up as I hiked.  Eventually, I just gave up and hiked like I was one of the inner city kids with their shorts around their hips and half their butt out.  Could not have been pretty to those behind me.  

So that wraps up our Italian hiking trip.  The Dolomites are truly spectacular and unique in my experinece.  No where else I think will you find such jagged, spiky mountains and such exposure while just hiking.  Combined with good food, lodgings, wine and the Italian bus adventure, it makes for a great European experience.  thanks for reading