I’ve been awake since 4 am. An hour of self loathing; followed by free form anxiety not otherwise specified until the alarm went. Horrid.
There’s a kettle in our room but no coffee or milk so had to wait for breakfast. This was perfectly adequate but not five star quality sadly. We then headed off for an outdoor adventure.
Being a ski resort, there are several gondolas within walk of the town centre. We took one up to the top of a nearby mountain. The ride was terrifying, with sheer drops of hundreds of feet onto the rocks below, and lots of horrible squeaks and creaking noises from the apparatus above us. I’m not a fan of heights. The gondola driver was unmoved though, far more interested in playing solitaire on his phone. I remember back in the nineties when they first put computer terminals in the hospital wards, the nurses used to sit there playing solitaire for hours. I didn’t think anyone still played it, with so much on offer on social media? Anyway, he certainly wasn’t wasting any of his precious time on Duolingo – when one of the passengers asked him in English about the geology of the mountains, he said “I don’t understand English” in Italian.
At the top of the gondola there was a lovely restaurant with very nice toilets where you could even book accommodation if you liked. There was some snow but clearly skiing is some weeks away, everyone else up there either had mountain bikes or tramping gear including poles. I felt quite underdressed with my sneakers, jeans, and a light puffer jacket. Were we the local equivalent of the morons that try to do the Tongariro Crossing in jandals?
The trail we had chosen was mostly downhill, to the half way point on the gondola ride, but it was still around 10 k and pretty challenging at times with snow, mud, rocks, scree, rivers, and cows.
This 2 D picture doesn’t convey the awesomeness of the mountains we were walking through.
We made it back to our hotel mid afternoon for a well deserved nap. After that we drove to have a look at The Miramonti Majestic Grand Hotel, the location for the first Pink Panther movie, unfortunately now closed due to fire regulations.
Dinner at a very cute restaurant just up the hill from our hotel, and now back in bed hoping for a better night’s sleep.