Skiing in Alta Badia

Saturday, January 30

One of our favorite times of the year, ski season! We try to go skiing as much as possible, which sometimes can be hard with both of us working full time and taking classes for our Master's degree full time. But somehow we still seem to make enough time to go skiing every once in a while. The plan this year is every other weekend, but well see. Another goal we try and do is go somewhere new every time we go skiing. There are so many different places within just a couple of hours from our house, which is perfect for us!

We decided to go skiing in Alta Badia which is about two hours and forty-five minutes from our house. So not that bad of a drive. We wanted something less than 3 hours away. This time there were 4 of us going skiing. Our usual 3, Preston, Bryce and I, but now we have another one of Preston's coworkers coming with us who has never skied before, so you definitely know it was going to be interesting.

Once we got there I couldn't wait to go up the chairlift and ski again! It's an addicting sport! No matter how sore or tired your legs feel while doing it.

One thing I love about skiing over here in Europe is how cheap the price of lift tickets are compared to in the states. Here it's between 40-55 Euro, while I've been told in the states it's sometimes $100 or more! Which seems a little crazy to me.

To start off the day we had to first try and teach our new ski buddy a few things about skiing, but first up the long gondola to the top of the mountain. One thing, he definitely needs to invest in some ski clothes, as he wore cotton sweatpants which get soaked super easy when your learning and falling all the time. Also, goggles here are a must!

I don't really remember the first time I tried to ski but it definitely is kinda entertaining and sometimes funny to watch new people learning to ski. Which was like our friend Jacob, watching him try and get used to wearing skis and learning how to cut down the slopes. We were lucky the first slope we chose to go down wasn't too bad to learn on. It was still slightly steep at one part but super wide so he could ski slowly down back and forth. And plus the view, as always, are breathtaking!

Sorry, but I just had to post these pictures of Jacob on the ground and Bryce trying to help him but then falling over himself hehe :)

Meanwhile, I'm over here like take my picture, it's so pretty up here! :)

Eventually we made it down his first hill! Nobody broke anything! Now time to go up another chairlift to try it again.

Another thing I love about European slopes is that there are bars scattered all around the mountain for you to stop at and get a drink or something to eat. So before we went down another full slope, we went partially down one and stopped at a bar for a drink and for our friend to rest for a minute, as he needed a little break after his first hill of learning how to ski.

Time to ski again!

This next slope was super long, but also perfect for him to try and learn more. I kinda just took off towards the bottom not realizing how long it really was. So I ended up sitting at a little bar/snack place at the bottom and enjoyed another glass of wine while I waited for them all to come down.

(It was a little sunny out)

Eventually, I saw Preston, then Bryce but no Jacob. I was wondering what happened to him. Eventually, we saw him waking down the rest of the mountain. We found out he got a little frustrated and decided to walk the rest of the way down. 

Since we had skied all the way down the mountain, we thought we would go back up and finally have lunch.

We went to the first place we saw when we got off the gondola. I ended up getting goulash soup and a piece of bread and of course a glass of red wine to go with it.

After enjoying lunch it was time to ski again!

One thing we found out is that you can get to Corvara, a ski place we went to last year that we did not like, from Alta Badia. If you ski down certain slopes you basically ski to a different section and area of the mountain. Alta Badia is huge!! You could go on a different slope basically the whole day if you really wanted to.

We ended up skiing until the chairlifts closed for the day. Which always seem a little early to me, they close at 1630. But I guess that is a long day since we always like to get there within an hour of the lifts opening at 0830.

It was unanimous, we all loved Alta Badia! This is now by far our favorite ski place we have been to over here! We had nothing bad to say about here. The views were amazing, the food was good, the slopes were perfect and you could ski new slopes basically all day! Definitely would break our tradition of going to new places everytime and come back here!

Time to drive back and find somewhere to eat dinner.

I had always said I wanted to try this place in Sacile called Funky Go, which is similar to BeFEDS in Aviano, which is our favorite! to see if it's as good as everyone talks about.

My verdict, I think I will always be a BeFEDS person! The one thing I did like is that there was wine on the menu and that the music was deafening like it is sometimes later at night at BeFEDS. The chicken seemed smaller to me and was too spicy after a while. Also, Preston got something completely different than what he thought he ordered. It was it was a sandwich but it come out as just a huge piece of plain breaded chicken.

I'm glad I can say I've tried it but I will most likely not be going back to this restaurant.

I can say that this was definitely a long but super fun filled day!! I can't wait until we get to go skiing again! :)