Pozza di Fassa, Italy - arriving in the Dolomites

Yesterday we had a great drive from Switzerland, through Austria and into Italy.  I am happy that the borders between countries do not check passports because when we drove into Austria I totally forgot to find our passports before packing our bags and they were in the trunk in a suitcase.  The border guard stopped us and said something in some language that I didn't understand.  I fumbled with my words in English not knowing what to do or where the passports actually were.  Then I asked him how much the toll was (pretending I thought it was a toll) and he told me "no money" and waved us along.  I was so nervous I had to pull over a few minutes later to find the passports in the trunk fearing that I had hidden them in our last apartment.  But all was good, I found them.

The last 40 km of our drive took more than an hour because it was so windy and slow.  The rain had stopped but the clouds were hiding the reason we came to this area - the Dolomites.  We arrived in the little town called Pozza di Fassa just as the clouds were clearing.  This place is spectacular.  So different from the alps.

The mountains have rocky tops without snow because they are smaller than the alps.  The rocky tops are very jagged and in most parts the rocks meet up with grassy areas instead of tree lines unlike our Canadian rockies.  In front of the rocky mountains there are rolling grassy hills speckled with little huts and cows.  And down on each valley there is a little town.

This is a ski town in the winter and there is so much to be done in the summer.  Our apartment is at the bottom of one of the chair lifts.  

We met up with Brigitte and Terry and went for an amazing dinner.  We were all delighted with the food and chocolate fondue for dessert.  Our hotel is charming.  Our room has wooden stairs going up to a small loft with slanted ceilings that has 2 single beds for the kids.  The views from our balcony are very nice.

Today we went up the gondola and did some hiking.  It turned into much more of a hike then we had expected, the trail from the gondola to the chair lift that we walked up was steeper than it looked, going up and up and up.  We took a chair lift down the the gondola and wanted to go down to our hotel for lunch but we arrived at 12:30 which is when they close the gondola for lunch of course.  So we had to wait at the top for 1.5 hours until they started the gondola again.  We ended up eating at one of the chalets at the top of the mountain and had an excellent meal.

Even at the top of this mountain there were several childrens playgrounds.  One of them had a very big zip line that Christian tested out first and almost didn't let the kids on.  We decided to let them ride it anyways and laughed as they almost ended up upside down when they hit the end and changed direction.

Then Terry, Blake and I went down the gondola while Christian, Brigitte and Jaida ended up hiking down the mountain.  They hiked the very steep trail under the chair lift.  It took them 2 hours to get home.  I can't believe they did this, it was quite and epic adventure for them.

our hotel, you can see Terry and Brigitte waving from their balcony