The skiing in Cortina was an unexpected bonus! We arrived on the Saturday night of fashion weekend, which took us completely by surprise with the full red carpet, alpine style, and the town heaving with the xmas markets and the who's who of fashion wearing Europe's finest....
The house Jo and Jase had booked was awesome, an expansive bunker apartment kitted out as a ski chalet in rustic timber style, with room for 2-3 families - we missed you Jase, Jo, Molly and Jack but at least we got to show it to you when we face timed for Molly's birthday...
We spent the first day checking out the town and getting organised with ski gear and 5 day passes, based on the bluebird forecast...
The next day we went up from Cortina by cable car to the local field of Tofana - the joy of not having to drive was a great novelty...
It was awesome - you couldn't see much snow from Cortina but suddenly we were up in the peaks via the two cable cars which went eye-wateringly high and seemed to ascend into the rock faces themselves. At the top we were all of a sudden in the snow and found that there were stunning wide open faces, as well as some great downhill runs between trees ("are we out of the woods yet, are we out of the woods yet, are we out of the woods..."). The weather was beautiful, the snow was good and we were the only ones on the mountain! After a few runs up the very top, we stopped for coffee and photos at the highest pizzeria in Europe:
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At lunch we had table service pretty much all to ourselves and Bill declared it was the happiest day of his life...
On day 2, we went to the other local field, Folonari, again on the cable car 5 minutes away from home. Another great day on the slopes - with amazing runs and scenery and the kids executing some great wipe-outs on the powder mound.
At one stage, Harv and Zoe did a run on their own and Harv had to come back to find us after Zoe got stuck in the powder mound - when Bill found her she was still sitting right under the snow maker, covered in snow...
The next day we drove to Arabba to do the Sella Ronda clockwise - a huge circuit around the Sella Massif, via about 8 different skifields which are all connected and accessible with the Dolomiti Superski pass - it was up hill and down dale via gondola, chairlift & even a pomma lift, over bridges, under roads and even across the main streets of a couple of bustling ski towns. What an awesome adventure it is - huge, wide, long expansive runs against amazing backdrops which we all loved, great for speed, scenery and family skiing. And the best part was, we pretty much had it all to ourselves and did not have to wait in a queue all day... definitely in the running for best all-time ski day ever!
And we kept coming across fantastic alpine restaurants and bars , so there were many stops and a few drinks along the way...
We were done by the end of the day!
On day 4 we decided to do the Sella Ronda again, this time anti-clockwise, starting at San Cassiano and connecting to the Sella Ronda from there.
On the last day, we had planned a cruisy day with no pressure to make it around the Sella Ronda....from San Cassiano we made our way again to Val Gardena where we knew the men's World Cup Super G was on - how awesome that was, to watch the Super G right at the finish line in the middle of the fan zone! Those guys are incredible. (Another lifelong dream of Bill's - tick)
However, as we started to head back, we realised we had been a bit too casual with our timing and suddenly we were very short of time to make it back to San Cassiano before the lifts closed....due to a series of rookie errors, and much to the children's chagrin, we had no time left to stop for lunch. So from 2-4 pm it was chocolate, lollies and sheer desperation which got us all back in time. We finally had apres-ski "lunch" at about 5pm in a bar in San Cassiano..... thanks goodness for pizza and "toasts"
Then it was real pizza in Cortina for final night dinner and home to bed. That's a wrap Cortina. What an amazing scenic feast of skiing it was. Shattered but satisfied...
Zoe says: I loved Cortina because the days were sunny and warm. I loved the skiing especially when we didn't have to do long drives. I loved the slopes because they were really wide and really quiet - I was going so fast. The good thing about skiing was that mum took the kinder surprises and the pick-up bars and the chocolate. But on the last day I was in charge of when we had the treats. I chose and the others agreed most of the time. The best thing about skiing was you could go as fast as you like but dad would still tell me to learn all the tricks like turning.
Amelia says: It was great to get 5 days skiing. My favourite day was the first day on the Sella Ronda - the other two days were a bit stressful. Mum bought heaps of delicious treats. Our house was really cool. I had three wipe-outs. My favourite was the one where I toppled over onto Harvey. I loved skiing in the dolomites because we nearly got the whole mountain to ourselves.
Harvey says: Cortina is an amazing ski-town with top-class skiing, all within 40 minutes away. When we were there we got the dololimiti superski pass which enabled us to ski throughout all of the Dolomites. I really like the Sella Ronda, especially clockwise, it goes through about 10 skifields and around the Sella Massif. In English it means "around the Sella". There was a really nice gelato shop in Cortina and we only went there once. I feel my skiing really improved during my stay in the Dolomites.
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