Sestriere

We had hoped to sleep in a little on our last morning in Venice, but jet-lag kicked in again, perhaps worse than our first morning. Instead, we spent time packing our bags, and getting ready to exit the city, then we had time for a small trip - starting with our local patisserie (noting that I have finally converted Nat to drinking a cappuccino :-) and meandering through some parts of Venice we were yet to see. This tour included the obligatory visit to a European church -- this one looked pretty plain from the outside, pretty spectacular within, and evoked some, err, interesting responses from Ella and Katy...




We picked up our bags with plenty of time to catch the train -- with so much luggage you can't run for the train, and we were pretty thankful that our apartment was so close to the train station. Our train journey sliced across the northern part of Italy, from Venice to Milan to Turin. The journey was pretty uneventful. We were hoping that there would be some good scenery, but everything was shrouded in fog. Then we jumped out, found a smaller regional train and kept going to Oulx. Finally, we grabbed a taxi for the ski town of Sestriere. As we climbed steadily from Turin, the fog lifted and Sestriere was actually warmer than Venice by the time we arrived. By this stage it was pretty dark, and we couldn't really make out the scenery. The girls were exhausted, so we cooked a quick dinner and went to bed, hoping they would sleep in for once ...

... which of course they didn't. So, once again we all found ourselves passing time in the dark waiting for the sun to come out and the shops to open!

The task was made easier by the rising excitement levels as we could see the groomers preparing the ski tracks fro our days activity. It turned out the the apartment we have booked here for the next week is about 100m from the slopes, with a great view over the main ski runs of Sestriere (including Borgata). The resort itself is pretty modest in size, but it's connected by gondola to Pragelato, Salze d'Oulx and Sansicario, which itself is connected to Claviere and (if you're really game) Montgenevre. This collection of resorts is known as Via Lattea (the Milky Way) with 63 lifts, 400 km of groomed trails. What's more, it had snowed in the last week, so even though it was pretty warm when we arrived, there should be enough snow to keep us happy for most of the week.

Our first full day here was Christmas Eve. The whole family was pretty tired after our journey from Venice, so we decided to take it easy - started the day by buying some supplies to get us through Christmas Day, then our ski tickets for the week and finally another cappuccino for Nat. Feeling considerably poorer, we finally strapped our skis on and headed out by mid-morning.

It was sunny, but windy, and the big gondolas were closed for the day, meaning we could only ski on Sestriere itself, but this was more than enough to keep us entertained for a shortened day of skiing. The day started well, when we discovered that our main chairlift had big padded seats -- definitely our most comfortable chairlift ride ever!

But on our second time up, calamity struck! Katy got stuck in the gate and missed the chair. We couldn't jump off, so the three of us left her there, crying in queue. The lifties and other skiers ignored here, so she stood to the side of the queue and bawled her eyes out as our chair drew away. Nat & I were kicking ourselves that we hadn't even spoke about how we would handle this eventuality. But, luckily, Katy decided to just stay still (probably because she was actually paralysed by fear rather than some rational thought process) and 20 minutes later Ella and I skied in to rescue her. Surprisingly she recovered quickly and we all got in a bit more skiing before the end of the day.

So, apart from the calamity, this was a good start, and allowed us to get our bearings, hoping that the gondolas would open again for our Christmas Day skiing!