Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Skiing in Italy

We spent a wonderful week in San Cristina (Dolomites - Italian Alps) skiing. We had five days of sunshine and two days of snowy whiteout. We came here because of the weather (last year in Austria we had only one sunny day skiing), and were not disappointed. Our appartment had a gorgeous view of the town and surrounding hills (above you can see the panorama view from our appartment).

Victoria took ski lessons all week, while the rest of us explored different runs. We also had an all day ski tour around a group of mountains. It was fun, but too many lift and gondola rides for our taste.

Being Carnival time, the ski school of the town put up a very nice ski show on Fat Tuesday. They turned the main street into a ski run by covering it with snow and then performing stunts. It was fun.

Last day on our way home we stopped in Bolzano, where we visited the famous Ice Mummy (Otzi). He froze on an Alpine mountain pass around 3400BC. It was extremely interesting since all his clothing and tools were remarkably well preseved. Even the leaves placed in bark basket to protect it from the glowing embers he was carrying were preserved. His frozen body was also put on show (not so nice).

Victoria in action:


Mark in action (it was really steep):

Break during our all day ski tour:


Ski show downtown San Cristina: