Today I want to tell you about a vacation I took a few weekends ago in San Martino di Castrozza, a well-known Italian ski resort. 2021 wasn't exactly the best year for skiing, since, due to the pandemic, all the facilities were closed. For this reason, this year I decided to take advantage of every possible moment to go on the snow.
My experience with skiing is relatively recent since I started skiing about 4-5 years ago, and in between, there was a not-so-pleasant experience for me. In fact, as I also described in a previous post, of which I leave a link below:

skiing on a slope where it had just snowed and not being used to the consistency of fresh snow, during a fall I almost broke my knee. Fortunately, after taking the x-rays, I discovered that I had simply frayed my ligaments and although I had to stay still for about 4-5 months at least I didn't have to have surgery.

But let's forget the negative thoughts and go back to my vacation in the mountains. My friends and I got organized in time and booked two rooms in a residence, named Lastei, which besides being very nice and comfortable was also in a very convenient location since it was possible to reach the slopes with no more than 5 minutes of walking. In addition, the residence also had a spa inside, with a sauna and aromatic baths 😍.

But let's go by order.
We left on Friday evening by car from Bologna and after about four hours of travel, we finally arrived in San Martino, here we headed straight to the restaurant and enjoyed the local specialties including of course the pork shank that I took, tagliatelle with wild boar ragout that I shared with a friend of mine (yes I admit I was very hungry), spatzle etc. ...

After dinner, we arrived at our residence and ended the evening with a very good herbal liqueur. We then went to sleep very excitedly for the next day.

When we woke up, we went out onto the large balcony of our room and found a truly wonderful view.

So, we finally went to rent boots and skis and we headed to the facilities.

The weekend we went skiing, was the one wherein in Italy we celebrate the Befana, that is the 6th of January, and usually, this day marks the end of the summer vacations so usually people go back to work the next day. So, lucky for us, many of the people who had been skiing in the mountains the day before were slowly going back home, so that on Saturday we found a few people on the slopes, but not that many, while on Sunday the slopes were completely free and skiing was really a spectacle.

The area of San Martino di Castrozza 60 km of skiable kilometers, with altitudes ranging from 1400 to 2400 m, offers a truly priceless view at the top (unfortunately combined with freezing temperatures).

Our typical ski day is composed by the following way:

• from 9 to 11 am we ski;
• we stop to have a bombardino in a mountain hut and take a short break;

you want to know what a bombardino is? If you take a look at the beginning of the post, there is a link to one of my previous posts, where there is an explanation.

• we go back to ski until 1 pm;
• we have lunch until 2 pm;
• and then ski again until 4 pm.

The only disadvantage, if we really want to call it a disadvantage, of having half-empty facilities is the fact that you can ski the slopes so many times and therefore you arrive at the end of the day very tired...... And so what better way to recover than to take a sauna as soon as you get back to the residence?

We spent about an hour inside the spa going from the sauna to the various aromatic baths trying to relax as much as possible.

Afterward, we had a final shower and went out, first exploring a little bit of the city by night, and then we headed for dinner.

By 21:30-22.00 we collapsed in bed because we were really tired.

The next day we woke up early and immediately went to the track and as I said before since most of the people had decided to leave on Saturday, we found ourselves on the track with very few people. In many of the descents that we did, we were practically alone and I must admit that this was really priceless.

Two of our friends took advantage of the afternoon of that day to go for a ride in the most panoramic part of the slope, as you can see in the final part of the video at the beginning of this post.

The hardest part of this white weekend, besides of course having to go home, was at least for me, the use of the chairlifts. In particular, on the first one I took, not being prepared for the speed of the seat arrival, I still had my poles in my hand, and being hit by the seat my poles got stuck and I accidentally unhooked one of my skis and lost my poles as well, which then fell off at the start of the lift. So I did the whole chairlift with only one ski and no poles, and of course, when it was time to get off it wasn't easy at all since I don't have that much experience anyway. Luckily, someone saw that I had lost my skis and poles and was kind enough to pick them up and bring them to the top, saving me from having to go down myself.

Conclusion

This was a really great weekend and I had a lot of fun, mostly because, as I said before, there weren't too many people in the facilities. The only negative aspect was actually the cost of this vacation, mostly because due to the pandemic all of the ski facilities were closed last year, and so this year they increase the prices in order to retrieve some of the gains. Of course, I don't blame them, but my wallet was much lighter when I came back home😅.