Throughout all of my travels, my overall favorite hotel is still the Parkhotel Laurin (Via Laurin, 4, 39100 Bolzano, Italy; phone +39 0471 311 000, www.laurin.it/en). My stay there in May 2016 was my sixth, and I paid $115 per night for seven nights, including breakfast and tax.
You can see the Dolomites from the Laurin, and I first discovered the hotel on a group tour that included Bolzano to see the 5,000-year-old “Ötzi the Iceman” at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology (Via Museo, 43, Bolzano; iceman.it/en).
Two Bolzano restaurants I’ve never written about to ITN are Hopfen & Co. (Piazza dell’Erbe, 17, Bolzano; phone +39 0471 300 788, www.boznerbier.it) and FranziskanerStuben (Via dei Francescani 7, Bolzano; phone +39 0471 976 183, www.franziskanerstuben.com/it [in Italian only]).
On this trip I returned to Hopfen & Co., visiting it two more times. A German-style beer house, this place is typically warm and woodsy, with separate rooms for dining.
I ordered my usual “rice pan,” which is how they have the Italian risotto translated on a separate menu in English. Their version of risotto is creamy, containing arugula, bits of fresh pear and a slice of Brie on top (€8.50, near $9). It was most enjoyable along with a delightful beverage called a Radler, which is half beer, half lemonade (€2.20).
FranziskanerStuben is relatively new, and I ate there three times. I would definitely call it interesting and certainly “bustling.”
On my first two visits, I arrived early enough to snag a small table and was treated cordially. No such luck on the third visit. After waiting quite a while, I was hurried to a table for four in a back room that normally accommodated larger groups, and it was full up.
Another middle-aged couple had also just been seated there. We all were a bit startled but accepted the situation because we wanted to eat! The three of us ended up learning a lot about each other. (I also got to see what they ordered.)
That afternoon, I ordered a typical German dish of canederli: three huge bread balls, each with a different ingredient mixed in (spinach, cheese, mushroom, etc.), atop a lightly seasoned bed of arugula, which was a great accompaniment.
At my first lunch there, I ordered an excellent mixed mushroom white lasagne (€10.80, which was the price for each of these entrées), served in the piping-hot pan in which it had been cooked. On my second visit, I chose a wonderful gnocchi in a light broth, with cherry tomatoes and arugula.
Mineral water cost €1.90, a small salad added €3.20, and the service charge was €1.70.
The menu had a lot of German dishes as well as Italian. I recommend the trattoria FranziskanerStuben highly.
MARILYN HILL
Portland, OR