After only starting school 7 weeks ago, last week was ‘White Week’ which is a week of school holidays where everyone seems to go skiing. We thought we would join in this tradition.
Ben and I have NEVER been skiing and the girls first tried skiing for one day at Xmas when we were in The Dolomites and they fell in love with it, and we got FOMO watching them from the sidelines. Coincidentally we met a gorgeous Australian family at Xmas though a mutual friend, and although they are based in Germany, they had booked a skit trip to The Dolomites for ski week and invited us to come along, which we decided to do and I’m so glad we did.
I went to physio twice last week for a neck injury and wanted to get it better enough for the ski trip, assuring the physio I would be back with much more severe injuries after my week i the snow, and she was trying to tell me not to ski and tell me horror stories from patients she treated after skiing…
Friday 22 February, Audrey had a big dress up parade, concert and parent party for Carnivale and the last day of school. It involved lots of snacks for kids, champagne for parents, DJ, lots of confetti (which for some reason I love)
We headed off from our house in Siena early Saturday 23 February and arrived in San Vigilio 5 hours later, to a gorgeous gingerbread looking fairytale village where we checked into our apartment which was ‘ski in ski out’ and I finally understand what that now means!
We spent to afternoon renting gear, buying ski passes and organising ski school for the kids and private lessons for Ben & I. The girls were all able to join the same ski school class with our other friends as they were all put together as the ‘English speaking’ group, not understanding German or Italian instructors. They were booked into classes for 3 hours each day and on the 6th day would be a race with trophies and prizes. All very exciting! Ben and I opted for a private class with Guido to see how we would go first time on skis.
Sunday morning the girls eagerly skied down from our front door over to their 10am ski class, while Ben and I had to drive the car over as we could not ski down the slopes but we were both excited, and I think equally nervous about our afternoon lessons. We walked up one of the slopes and found a gorgeous bar where we sat for 3 hours watching the kids ski and trying not to drink too much before our afternoon lessons. I was introduced to Bombardino which is 1/2 eggnog and 1/2 brandy with whipped cream on top…mmmm and of course a few aperol spritz throughout the day.
Ben and I headed over to our afternoon private ski class with Guido (an older instructor in his 60s with a very serious moustache and not a lot of English). We learnt how to put on skis, go from ski to ski on one leg at a time and after 20 minutes he announced we’d now go down the 2.5km slope….uuummmm what? I think I panicked a little and could not get the hang of it at all, sliding all over the place, skis crossing over, falling down and just not enjoying it at all thinking at any moment I would fall, twist my knee and end up in a cast. Meanwhile Ben was doing great, speeding past me and really enjoying it.
I left the lesson feeling very defeated and decided I would just not be a skier and sit in the bar, reading a book while the girls and Ben could ski all week. Ben, the kids and our friends were telling me I’d pick it up if I kept going but I was not convinced and cancelled further lessons with Guido.
Waking up Monday morning and a new day, I decided to take the morning off and try lessons with another instructor later in the day to see iff I could progress. The next 2 days I had private lessons with Huebert, a much younger Italian man in his 30s and quite gorgeous too which helped! He taught me the ropes and by Wednesday I was skiing with Ben and the girls and getting used to it a lot more, still going very slowly but not falling over so much.
Thursday and Friday were my big ski days where I loved it, could vaguely keep up with Ben and the girls and ski together, go to steeper slopes, head all over the mountain and to the toboggan area with the girls where we stayed for a whole afternoon racing toboggans.
Thursday afternoon was our only incident as we headed quite far away from our apartment which took an hour to reach on skis. It was stunning as it was the top of the mountain Kronplatz and I had one of our German friends helped me get there which involved a few gondolas, a few steeps 500 meter runs, a chairlift (which I fell off spectacularly) and some more skiing.
Anyway Ben and the kids got there earlier than me and when I arrived we decided to stay, have lunch and look around. Our friends all headed back but we stayed up here and the kids skied for a few more hours. After vaguely working out the best way back, we left at 3pm knowing the chair lifts stopped at 5pm and it gave us 2 hours top navigate back over the mountain and get home before dark.
We skied down the steepest first part of the mountain but when we got half way down towards the first gondola ride, Audrey was hysterical in tears, very exhausted and decided she could not ski at all anymore and lay down on the snow refusing to keep going, and I was also feeling exhausted and out of my league.
Hayley and Polly were pretty far ahead at this stage and Ben made a call that we all stop, walk back up the mountain with our skies, which was quite far but closer than the gondola which looked miles away. Hayley was not happy and protesting that she would go alone and meet us at home but of course we decided to all stay together. We were all very grumpy and tired and I think I might have poked my ski pole at Hayley’s eye at one point as she was being so annoying! It took 30-40 min to walk up the mountain again and then work out how to get back to our apartment.
We found a gondola from the top of Kronplatz that would take us all the way down to a town called Bruneck where we could get a shuttle that could drive us the 20km back to our apartment. We finally made it home in the shuttle, tired but safe and sound. A really good call to turn around and walk back rather than all get stuck on the mountain overnight and freeze to death.
We had the best week in the snow, with amazing views, drinking lots of hot chocolates, eating apple strudel and friend apple fritters with ice cream, schnitzels with potatoes and even a BBQ with our Australian friends.
We can’t wait to go to the snow again, hopefully at Xmas for a week back to The Dolomites before we head back to Australia end of January.
I came home with 16 bruises in total although Audrey won the bruise competition with 19!
I CANNOT BELIEVE I CAN SKI, I LOVE IT!!!!
