Saturday, February 13
Valentine's Day weekend we definitely wanted to do something since we both had a 3 day weekend. Of course since it is ski season, we decided to go skiing! And as usual we found a place we had not been skiing at before. We chose Kronplatz, which is almost 3 hours from our house, but since we were spending the night Preston said he didn't mind a little further drive.
Our 2 other friends, Bryce and Jacob, decided to come too. We found a place in the mountains that had 2 adjoining rooms for us to all split. I will tell more about the interesting hotel later.
I don't know if I have ever said in my previous posts but we have a tradition, whenever we go skiing, to the beach or traveling somewhere we always stop at the shoppette to pick up some breakfast goodies. I always get my powdered donuts, while all the guys get "tornadoes," yes, they sound as interesting as the name. Then Preston and I usually get an energy tea just in case we need it on the way up, along with our snickers bar to split after skiing the whole day as a slight pick me up before dinner.
We had left early again so we could get there within an hour of the slopes opening. It wasn't too bad by the time we got there, we had a pretty close spot to where you purchase lift tickets.
This was definitely a different ski place than any other we had been used to. There were 3 gondolas right near each other, which made it very confusing on which one to take. We just decided to take the one closest to us. It did no go up the mountain, only about a third the way up. This actually played in our favor because we could warm up with this shorter hill and we could try and help our friend, who's new to skiing, a little more before we go up the mountain.
After going down this hill a couple of times, we let our friend, Jacob, chose if he wanted to stay down at the bottom to practice more or come up to the top with us. He stayed down there, so we told him we would come down and find him for lunch.
Off Preston, Bryce and I went, up to the top of the mountain.
Of course, the views at the top were incredible!
We chose a random hill to go down to see where it takes us. The one we chose was pretty steep and kinda difficult, plus it was super long! Which isn't a bad thing, but once we reached a stopping point we decided we need some "liquid courage" to keep going. One thing I will miss about skiing in Europe is all the different bars you can stop at throughout the mountains.
Back to skiing!
We ended up skiing for another 2-3 hours before we decided we needed something to eat. This is where the fun begins...
Ski places in Europe do not have one starting point, there can be multiple and they can be very confusing on knowing which one you actually came up on. If you don't pay close attention and know exactly the one you came up on you could end up doing what Preston, Bryce and I did. We were trying to find our gondola ride down to meet Jacob for lunch, but instead we accidentally got on the wrong one. We started to realize it about a third the way down, but at this point there's not much we can do but just ride it all the way down, at least there were pretty views. It ended up being a 20 minute ride down; therefore, a 40 minute gondola ride total because we accidentally got on the wrong one. Luckily Jacob had his phone so I told him just to meet us at the top, we didn't want to get on any more gondolas for a while. We never want to make that mistake again, as we were already really hungry and had to wait almost an extra hour until we could get food.
That was just the beginning to our lunch dilemma. The first restaurant we went to was super crowded and had no tables left. Luckily, there was another restaurant not too far away. We got to this one and it was also super crowded. I was so glad I found one empty table for us to sit at!
I decided to get a bowl of soup to split with Preston and a bratwurst and fries. Well I should I just stuck to my usual meal of soup and bread. The soup came out, unfortunately no bread, and then slowly everybody else's food came out too. Preston and I split the soup, I gave him more of it because I thought my food was going to come out in the next 5 minutes. Nope, it wasn't until about 30 minutes later after asking multiple waiters that my main food came out. Everybody had already finished their food about 20 minutes earlier and now had to wait for my super hangry self to eat.
Finally after I finished and we paid, we could go back skiing!
Jacob went back down the mountain to the shorter slopes, while we stayed at the top and explored more of the mountains up there.
We skied right until the chairlifts were about to stop running. Then it was time to pack everything up and find the hotel. But not without another mishap...
Since we stay until the slopes are about to close at 4:30, the parking lot is almost empty. We were super lucky because even with our 4 wheel drive car, the back end of it hit an ice patch, going super slow I might add, and the back end slipped and we went sliding down the parking lot. We were so lucky there was only one car down some ways not multiple that we could of hit. To make it even luckier, somehow our car stopped before hitting the car. You could barely even fit your fingers between our back bumper and their front one, that is how close we got! After this I just wanted some food and a glass of wine!
When we finally made it to the hotel, which ended up being literally on top of a mountain...
...we asked if they were still serving dinner, as when we booked it said there was a restaurant where you could get food. This is another thing you have to be careful about in Europe, not everything means what it actually says. We asked the lady and she said you had to have told us in advance you wanted to eat dinner. We don't have anything. Eventually she said she could make us a plate of cheese and prosciutto. At this point we did not want to go back down the mountain to find food, so we had to say yes. This was going to be the worst dinner after skiing all day ever!
After bringing in all our bags, I went to get our passports back and the lady told me the owner would make us some pasta now. So of course we accepted, but she said it wouldn't be ready until 8:30, which was still about 45 minutes away. Time to chill and have a glass of wine.
When we got down to the restaurant there was a family already in there with massive dishes of all types of meat and food. Which let us know they just did not want to feed us. But we couldn't complain I guess at this point since they did eventually say they would make us a pasta dish and we were all starving.
After dinner it was definitely time for all of us to go to bed, as it was a long day! And we had another fun filled day of skiing the next day.
Sunday, February 14
I will say the hotel wasn't bad, a normal European type accommodation. Sometimes I'm used to it more than others.
Time to go down and see what they had for breakfast. They didn't have much food to choose from, but at least we had a little something before we went skiing again.
Today we did not feel like going back to Kronplatz again. It was a nice place but since the powder was so fresh, that when anybody cut hard it would leave a huge mogul and if you turned at the wrong time over it you could get caught and fall. Maybe it's just us, as were not experts, but it was a little annoying. So we decided to go to Alta Badia again, as this has become our favorite place to ski at. Also, going to Alta Badia we are closer to home, so it will only be about 2.5 hours instead of 3. Which is always nice after a long day of skiing.
Today Jacob decided to stay with us the whole day. He started off a little slow, but that's still expected as he had never skied before these past times.
After skiing all over the mountains again, it was time for a lunch break! We did not want the same restaurant as the last time we were here, as it was self-serve and we were feeling lazy and wanted to be served. Of course by accident we walked in to the same one as last time but then walked out to find another place. Another good thing about skiing over here, is how many places there are to eat!
We just skied down a little ways and found another restaurant to try. Also as usual it was pretty crowded! But we found a section to sit at in this island thing they had in the middle of the place.
I decided to try a dish I had never had before. I can't remember the exact name but the type of pasta was called orzo. Mine had some veggies, spices and speck in it. It looked similar to risotto but instead of being like rice it is a pasta. It was really good! I would definitely try this pasta again.
After enjoying our little break it was time to go skiing again. But not until Preston got to pretend to sun bathe, even with the snow starting to come down harder.
It was a little tricky at first trying to ski with the snow coming down so fast but was also a lot of fun to be skiing through a mini snow storm.
It was nice that the mini snow storm didn't last that long, so we could actually see up ahead while skiing again.
We ended up skiing until about 4ish, as the lifts were about to close soon.
Now to load up the car and head back home. But not until we stop at BeFEDS for dinner! Nice big meal after a long day of skiing again!
I love being able to go away to go skiing over the long weekends, I will sure miss this when we have to leave!
