Our Dolomiti ski adventure

 We all had a good day but in a variety of ways. Jim took the morning off and then skied the afternoon at San Pelligrino. Ellen cross country skied in the morning and then hiked around in the afternoon. I spent the morning walking around town, and joined Ellen in the afternoon as my ski legs had had enough, and Pam & Rob went back to a portion of the Sellaronda that included a sledding extravaganza.  Views from my morning walk, one of the local cheese/ sausage/ grappa shops.  A little gnome home 😂 Pam & Rob’s sled ride 😳 

 Since we had such a great day yesterday at San Pellegrino we decided to return there today. The temperatures are starting  to warm a bit and with the sun shining on the pistes that have a southern exposure we were a bit more challenged today with pushing mounds of snow. I also suspect the groomers took the night off 🤨, or perhaps my legs are just getting weary. Pam, Rob & I still had a very fun day.  Our favorite rest stop My artistic shots of the day 😉 If you look closely you can see the runs and chair lifts which will help put the size of the mountains into perspective I forgot to mention that yesterday was La Festa della Donna - Italy’s celebration of International Women’s Day.  So we were all given a lovely bouquet of mimosa flowers at breakfast.  Had I known I would have had a Mimosa for breakfast! Also last night at dinner, our chef paraded through the dining room with our host entertaining us with his bag pipe. 

 Today was our best day yet! It was a blue bird day and we ( Pam, Jim, Rob & I)  spent the day at Passo San Pellegrino. This was the view looking over our town as we rode the bus this morning.  The runs today were all blue or blue/ black groomers, and at the crest of every chair lift we were wowed by another breathtaking view. It was hard to keep your eyes on the run surrounded by these views. This was our lunch spot Cheers to some great runs!

 The Sellaronda is a panoramic 26 mile tour. It is a UNESCO World heritage site which runs around the “Sella group”. It takes about 5-6 hours to ski either clockwise or counterclockwise ( and you must stick with one or the other) it connects 4 internationally famous ski resorts and covers 310 miles of ski slopes! The challenge is to not get  lost and finish on time, because the return options would be either a cab for a fare of 400+ euros, or a hotel room for the night ( which would be cheaper) if you don’t make it back in time to catch the bus. We began the adventure taking a tram that holds 100 people up to the mountain top.  The views were spectacular with every run. The worst part of the day was after lunch we had to get down a very steep run, full of mogels and people who had wiped out on their way down 😬. It took a while but we all made it down.  Finally, with the help of one of the Lift operators and Jim’s persistence we did make it back to the start via 2 ch...

 Monday was a good day of skiing. We (Maureen, Pam, Jim, Rob & I) were shuttled to an area called Obereggen. Ellen took off to find cross country trails. This area actually crosses over into Germany. The runs today were long and not so steep, which made it more enjoyable. We learned a few things along the way and had a lot of laughs. On one of our chair lift rides, shortly after boarding a very loud voice seemed to come out of no where saying “ abbassare la barra!”, we all said “what was that?” And then the voice hollered again , this time in english, (I guess he figured since the first attempt didn’t work), “lower the bar!”. We thought for a moment it was the voice of God!  Finding our way around the mountain has been a real challenge. Near the end of the day, we were looking for the way to Predazzo, and we all had a good laugh at Rob’s expense as he blew right past the sign, turning left, sure he was going the right direction 😂  The views remain amazing After retur...

Let me back up just a bit as I didn’t blog yesterday. We ( Ellen, Pam, Maureen, Rob & I ) started our day with a 4 mile walk through the streets of Venice. While no one would admit we were ever lost in this city, it sure felt like it at times. We stopped for our morning cappuccino & croissant and eventually found our way back to our hotel. With Jim joining us we walked around a bit more and eventually made our way to the airport via the waterbus.  We met our group at the airport and by 4:30 we were on our way to the town of Modena, in the Dolomites. After dinner the group got together for introductions and a briefing on details for the week.  Our drive to Moena  This morning we woke to a beautiful blue sky day. Once again, thanks to Jim, Maureen & Rob our day was planned and we caught a ski bus to an area called Alpe Lusia. The skiing here is challenging as all of the snow is man made and so while we’re not skiing on ice , the packed powder has an icy feel to ...