The Dolomiti

The Italian thing to do in the winter is to go skiing. 

Luca has gone snowboarding with his friends for many years over the winter holidays, celebrating New Years up in the mountains. Since we both had a week off from the 30th to the 7th of December/January we decided to hit the slopes.

We started looking in October/November for a place to stay. We used booking.com and the criteria was really the best offer. We ended up finding the perfect lodge near La Marmolada, Hotel La Marianna, which offered both breakfast and dinner as part of the stay. 

 

We left early on January 1st and drove for about 3 hours through Veneto until we reached Rocca Pietore, which is a the tiny village where our Hotel was. It's beautiful driving through the Alps, but also nerve-racking, as the roads are very narrow, windy, and steep. 

I used to go skiing in the winter with my family up at Giants Ridge in Minnesota. My Dad taught me how to ski and after a few years I was able to do pretty much all of the runs at Giants Ridge. Of course Minnesota doesn't have mountains and the skiing I had experienced growing up was quite different.

The first day out on the slopes, we drove to the closest ski point which was Malga Ciapela. We had a nice day out, and we started nice and slow and easy since I hadn't skied in at least 6 years and Luca was very dubious of my skiing ability. 

There weren't a lot of options for skiing there, just one run which blue, the easiest piste, unless you took the cableway up to a much high point. 

The following day we decided to ski/snowboard at Alleghe. Here they had lots more blue runs and so I could some more practice in before trying out the red ones, which is medium difficulty. Attempting any black hills was completely out of the question. I was feeling pretty confident and I was able to do all the runs with Luca. 

However to ski, you need to be in shape. And I'm definitely out of shape. So near the end of day, my legs were dead tired, I was losing form, and was about ready to go home. So, on the last run which brings right down into the parking lot, I had a big fall, lost a ski, and was in tears. Thankfully, people in the mountains are very friendly. There is definitely a type of "helping-one-another-out" culture. As soon as a fell there was a skier behind me who grabbed my ski, brought it to me, stopped and helped me get it back on and stand up. 

Our third day in the Dolomites it snowed and snowed and snowed. All the snow meant that we couldn't go up high with a cableway and try out a different skiing area. The higher you go the more foggy it is and the more difficult it is to see. So we went back to the easy blue run at Malga Ciapela, but this time with a snowboard! 

The most difficult part about learning to snowboard that day was learning how to go up the hill with the T-Bar. Thankfully I wasn't the only one learning and there were other novice snowboarders who were falling over trying to hold on for dear life to the T-Bar as they're dragged up the hill. 

It was beautiful to be up in the mountains this time of year. In Bologna there isn't any snow, I was missing it. It fell so wintery and cozy with the snowfall and being out on the slopes. 

The North of Italy has a completely different feel. The architecture is different, the cuisine, and of course they have their own dialect too. 

                                     

                                               

Attempting to Snowboard

I have been terrible about posting new blogs and I apologize. I will try to do better! This post is long over due but it's never too late! 

Back in December, Luca took me into the Apennine Mountains in Northern Tuscany to go snowboarding for the first time. I had never been skiing/snowboarding in actual mountains before, my only experience had been the big hills of Minnesota which doesn't seem like such a comparison. 

I had also never been snowboarding. I had had many friends promise that they would take me snowboarding and teach me this cool looking, popular sport, but no one ever lived up to their promise, except Luca.  

I had been told many times before that you need more than just one day to learn. You need to be patient. You will fall, and fall again, and again, and again. It will hurt. It will be painful. You wont' be able to walk the next day. Etc. etc. etc. I had heard it all before ..... and it was definitely all true, even though I thought I would and could do better. 

I spent almost the whole day on the bunny hill. It was frustrating since the hill isn't long enough to even get a good trial run in. When you think you actually are getting the hang of things, the hill ends and you have to go back up to the top, work on standing up, making your way through all the other beginners, and then going just enough to stay on your feet for 5 seconds. 

However, at the end of the day, I was able to make it down a blue run (which here is our green, and thankfully Luca told me that, because it would have been a terrible mistake to go down a green run!) even though I probably didn't have any proper form. 

And I'll admit that at the end of the day after having fallen so many times, I was in tears from falling on bruises. My knees were bruised, my butt was bruised, I couldn't raise my arms, it killed to walk stairs, and I felt like my wrists were going to fall off. 

I haven't decided yet if the next time we go, I'll grab a pair of skis which I feel totally comfortable on, or try to conquer the snowboard again!