Skiing in Italy Dec '08-Jan '09 - her version

10 days of winter holidays is absolutely not enough!...Not if you’re going skiing at least J We went to Italy , in the Dolomites Alps, in a small resort called Colle Isarco - 9 km away from the Austrian border, very close to Brenner.

Accomodation:
The resort itself is not necessarily worth mentioning, as it’s very small and not extremely popular. Maybe it would fit best families looking for a quiet vacation, or elderly tourists. But for us, evenings in Colle Isarco were pretty boring as there was not much entertainment going around. The accommodation was very good. Alpenhof Pension is a family-run small hotel, conducted by Mrs. Plank. The prices are convenient (42 eur/day/person, half-board). You can decide on a daily basis whether you want to have dinner in the hotel or not, and the price without dinner is 28 eur/day/person.
Altogether we were 12 people + a 10 month old baby. Eight of us were lodged at Alpenhof, 2 others in Hotel Schuster , and 2 others in another resort 14 km away (Val di Vize).

Skiing:
To get to the nearest ski area , in Vipiteno , you have to take a 10 minutes car drive. There is also a ski-bus, but we never used it. The slope in Vipiteno is called Monte Cavalo. It’s a good slope for beginners, but it’s not very attractive for “professional skiers”, as the length of the runs is not very big. Nevertheless, one can ski there for 2-3 days without getting bored. The price for a daily ski pass is 27 eur/person, and the ski-lifts only work from 9 AM to 4PM.

Vipiteno, Monte Cavalo ski areaVipiteno, Monte Cavalo ski area
Luckily 2 of our friends were eager to explore the area and check out other slopes from other resorts, so we had the chance to go with them also to other ski areas.
On 2 days we went with them to Racines. The slopes here were a bit longer and more numerous than in Vipiteno, and the landscapes prettier. I have the feeling Racines is also more attractive in terms of après-ski.












Racines ski area
The most interesting ski-area we visited is Sella Ronda. Basically, it’s a group of mountains, surrounded by resorts. You start skiing from one resort and you circle the whole group of mountains until you get back to where you started from. The entire length of this “trip” is 110 km (which proved to be too much for me, as I didn’t manage to get back to Selva – that’s where we started from). The highest point in this area is peak Marmolada (3265 m).
At one point we decided to split: our 2 friends (Sven & Roland) went ahead, as they were faster and it made sense that at least they should get to where we’d parked the car (in Selva), and me and Pufi stayed behind, hoping to get as close to Selva as possible. Unfortunately my turtle-speed prevented us from reaching the finish-line, and we got stuck on the slope in Colfosco (another resort in the area). Two carabinieri (God bless them !! :)) took us to the town of Colfoso by snow-mobile, and Sven & Roland (God bless them too ! :)) picked us up from there, with their car. Sella Ronda
Sella Ronda

The evenings:
As I said, Colle Isarco is not the best destination for glamorous night-life. Not even for “evening-life”, for that matter :)
Vipiteno, the closest resort, is a little bit more lively, but even here it’s difficult to find entertainment. It has 2 pubs/bars where locals say that people dance , but when we went there, there wasn’t any dancing going around.
One evening we went to Val Gardena (one driving hour away). This resort is bigger and a lot nicer. It’s also more expensive, which is why it was crowded with rich Russians. Walking the small streets in Val Gardena is pleasant, as they have all these colorful, coquette little buildings.
On the 1st of January we went to a skiing show in Racines. Due to the traffic and lack of parking places we missed most of the show, but we arrived in time for the fireworks, which were a lot more spectacular than the ones the night before (New Year’s Eve)

New Year’s Eve:
We had a reservation at a restaurant in Austria on the Bergeralm slope. To get to the restaurant we had to take the gondola. We got there at about 11 PM and at 1:30 AM everybody had to leave because it was the last ride with the gondola taking you back to the city. The buffet food was good, we also had a live band singing Austrian traditional songs – which didn’t appeal too much to me J a few people were dancing, especially the ones who appreciated the music. The New Year’s Eve party here was very different from what I was used to – it was, let’s say – a bit too quiet and too calm for my taste. The price, including buffet dinner, was 33 euro/person. All the drinks we ordered were extra.

The food:
This area of Italy, being so close to the Austrian border, is heavily influenced by Austrian cuisine. So the tens of sorts of Austrian sausages are more likely to be found in restaurants than Italian pizza and pasta. The same thing goes for “haxe” (roasted pork leg). Also, German (Austrian) language is spoken more often by locals than Italian.
In our “lunch breaks” on the slopes, I thing we ate litres of soup (Pastina in brodo, Knodelsoup, Gulash soup), as it managed to warm us up fast.

The road to / from Colle Isarco
On the way to Colle Isarco we slept in Budapest, at Ibis Vaci Ut hotel (42 euro/night/room). We chose this hotel because we really wanted to go to the famous Fatal restaurant in Budapest, which is located on Vaci Uta street. Unfortunately we found out that Vaci Ut is not the same with Vaci Uta J… so, for only one missing letter we had to drive for about 20 minutes to get to Fatal restaurant. But the great food was worth it, it’s definitely a place worth going to ! Budapest by night, at least in the 30 minutes we say it, looks also very good.
On the way back we slept in Szeged, at Fehertoi Hotel . The hotel itself wasn’t very nice, it was a typical transit hotel, too expensive for what it had to offer (58 euro/night/room). But again, the food was exceptional !! Szeged is famous for its fish soup recipe, they even have the “Fish Soup Festival”, and after tasting it I can understand why! The really funny thing was their menu: they also had a menu in Romanian, probably not translated by a Romanian native, so the names of the dishes were “slaughtered” in a hilarious way :)


To wrap things up, I would say this holiday’s strong points were the daytime activities (especially skiing): great slopes, not at all crowded, exceptionally good weather, only sunny days, clear blue sky, good company... Its’ weak points were après-ski activities (evenings, nightlife). Before we left on holiday, we were warned by a few friends that we shouldn’t expect too much après-ski entertainment if we go to Austria … and they were right. But then again, we did go there to ski, so we managed to achieve our goal :)

*More photos here.

'Till next time !