Donna e Bambini Prima

We got up at eight today, and we went to breakfast at nine. Thanks to a review (in Russian) on Tripadvisor Leia knew she could order omelets. I made myself a hard-boiled egg, and had a lot of bacon. We also enjoyed some ham and cheese and a lot of bread and cereal. It was a little disappointing that there were no vegetables except grilled tomatoes, but there was fruit salad for dessert.

We poked our heads into the hotel's ski rental shop in the garage, and decided to go to the other ski rental shop near the ski school because they had high prices for a rather lackluster selection of skis. To reach that shop we needed to adventure through a path in the snow across the street, less than ten minutes walk. Their selection was not much more impressive, but we did save over a hundred euros on our rental. We left the skis there to change boots in the hotel and came back to retrieve them on our way to the lifts, because the snow path from our hotel to the ski school area overlooks a scary drop. We were quite tired and Leia even managed to fall in her skis before getting on our first lift today at noon.

This is the piste map. We will likely use numbers more than names, because that is how we refer to the lifts and runs. We started up on the gondola Groste 45 on the left side of the map and skied down that side of the mountain almost exclusively, getting only as far as lift 41.

Leia skied amazingly, a true natural. On her first run she was executing perfect parallel turns and remembering points of technique I did not even remember to mention. She had a huge grin that was fun to see, and we both enjoyed being on snow again. We started late and planned to have an early dinner so we didn't stop for lunch but only to refill our water bottle. Around two in the afternoon after one such stop and shuffling along a long flat blue run we got tired and Leia suddenly forgot all she knew. To finish the day we had to cross a bridge at the base of lift 45 leading across to lift 32. It was a gentle incline but there was a "magic carpet" lift to bring us up the bridge. From the top of lift 32 we could find run 54 and reach our hotel from there.

Along the way we saw a woman dragging a tiny white fluffy dog in a red jumpsuit by a leash. She was skiing a wedge (as fast as Leia at that point in the day) down a red run and the tiny dog was racing down after her as fast as its tiny legs could carry it.

Our hotel is actually located somewhat far outside of Madonna di Campiglio, near a tiny collection of hotels called Campo Carlo Magno. We hoped to have an early dinner in Madonna di Campiglio today so as soon as we got to the hotel before 1700 we changed and raced down to get the hotel shuttle into town. It had already left when we got to the parking lot, so we took the local ski-bus six minutes later. It costs 2 euros a day but we have not yet figured out where we can pay for it. Unfortunately we were not aware that everything in Madonna di Campiglio is closed all day and restaurants only open for dinner at 1830 at the earliest. We learned that when we reached our chosen restaurant at 1730 and ended up walking around the town for an hour looking into closed restaurants, our tummies grumbling. We finally grumpily settled into a seafood restaurant we saw on the way called AltoMare. There we had a raw salmon starter, tuna steak with a nutty sauce (mistranslated as dried fruit) and a swordfish steak. It was all pretty good but not worth over 80 euros, including 4 for the "table settings." (There was no security guard to blame it on.)

We enjoyed our meal and hurried up to the central Piazza Brenta Alta to catch the 1940 hotel shuttle back. There was a big crowd of people from our hotel waiting to get on, and the driver said "Donna e bambini primo!" (ladies and children first) as if we were getting into a lifeboat. He told me in Russian that in ten more minutes he'd come back for the men, but he had room for Leia so I hid under her lap and rode home too.

That gave us just enough time to change into swimsuits and try the spa before it closed. We experienced the dry and wet saunas, and the jacuzzi, until they kicked us out of it by 2030. We got back to the room, showered, and cuddled. I found a note slipped under our door in Italian; at first I feared it was a bill for 20 euros for taking the spa towels, but a closer Google Translate inspection revealed it to be a voucher for 20 euros off a spa treatment.

I went down to the reception to ask about that, as well as orient myself about many other things like where I can withdraw money, buy groceries, use the ski lockers, and why the restaurants are only open at hours when it's impossible to get to them - the last buses back from town are at 2000 and some restaurants open at 1930! One of the receptionists was alarmed at the length of my list of questions, and he chatted with me about whether I'm not concerned about the Kosher. I tried to blog but Leia fell asleep from my boring voice.