It's Ski Time!

As promised, this post will be about skiing in Italy.  Fortunately, I was able to ski for the second consecutive weekend...unfortunately, I forgot my camera for the second consecutive weekend.  Luckily, a ski buddy brought hers and I snagged some pictures she posted. 

Last weekend, I skied with "work", which basically meant I made sure no kids got seriously injured or lost going down the slopes.  We spent the day in Arabba, a ski resort overlooking the small town.  It's the highest point in the Dolomites and is adjacent to the glacier Marmolada.  Being that the town is so high up, they had plenty of snow for the first week and December and conditions were great.  Conditions on the bus ride up were not so great.  Since childhood, car rides have given me serious carsickness. Imagine my horror as I sat on a bus slowly making its way up switchbacks on the face of a mountain.  Luckily, my mother taught me to always travel with a plastic bag handy.  Once on the mountain, I fared much better and enjoyed myself and the views.  Unlike skiing at home, there was no wind, so the temperature felt very comfortable.  I vow to return with a camera as the scene of freshly fallen snow on a small Italian town in the mountains was breathtaking.

This weekend, we decided to stay local and hit up the closest ski resort to us.  Only an hour and a half away, Folgaria provided plenty of slopes and lifts for an early season day.  The mountain was not as quaint or beautiful as last weekend, but it had decent trails and a variety of terrain. (Unfortunately, it was also up some switchbacks and I had my plastic bag ready on my lap.)  Saturday was the best day weather wise we have had in more than a month.  No joke, the sun hasn't been out since October, but as you can see, it was a bluebird day.

The first thing you notice in this picture is not the handsome man on the left, but the tube that seems oddly out of place.  The Italians seemed to have mastered the lift system.  This tunnel is actually an enclosed magic carpet at the top of a lift.  Instead of trekking uphill to another section of the mountain, this magic carpet will take you there! 

Speaking of lifts, the lift lines here would put Cindy, LoriAnn and Norman out of jobs if installed in Bethel, Maine.  Your lift ticket is actually a card that goes in your left jacket pocket.  To get into the lift line area, you stand next to an scanner and it reads your card and lets you through a turnstile. I'm still not sure if I like this system because it's difficult and awkward to get through a turnstile on skis, but it seems efficient.  You then enter no man's land and use the Italian line system to get on the lift.  As I've mentioned before, Italians are allergic to line formation, so this also creates chaos.  Since it's been early in the season, we've lucked out and haven't waited in many lines or assaulted any Italians with our poles...yet.

The scanner system used to check lift tickets.  Picture stolen from Caitlin Robbie.

Not to knock my winter home of Sunday River, Maine, but skiing in Italy has been very enjoyable the past two weekends.  The weather is perfect and the snow and conditions pretty good for early December.  Last weekend, I ate lunch outside and this weekend, we stopped for a drink with friends (because there are bars on the side of the trails here!) and sat at picnic tables.  Most times at home, we are scurrying into the North Peak Lodge to get hot chocolate because we can't feel our toes, hands, faces and noses.  As mom would say, "it's (always) a double hand-warmer day."

Lately, I've been having several "I wish I spoke Italian" moments....like when I went shopping at the mall last week and had to ask for something behind a glass case....or when I picked up pizza at our local shop and the cook decided to have a conversation with me...or when our GPS gave us the wrong directions when leaving the mountain and we encountered a closed road (and lots of signage) and chose to drive up it as it was covered in snow...only to have to turn around when the road became impassable.  We can laugh about it now. (Language side note- the word for ski in Italian is sci (pronounced she) and the verb "to ski" is sciare (pronounced she-ah-ray).  It's become my least favorite Italian word because it just sounds so wrong.)

There will be more about ski adventures next week.  This weekend, we have Euro Shawn coming by for a last visit before he heads home.  We will be headed to some of the Dolomites finest slopes.  It'll be an early day on Saturday, but I'm planning to wake-up to the sounds of Jon Secada. (Oh, Brookside humor!)  Until then, I'll be doing my snow dance.

Our ski group for the day striking a pose.